Archangel Ascendant
by TheManWithAPlan
Summary: He left Omega as Garrus Vakarian, he returned as the Archangel. To those who would harm the innocent, beware his wrath. Part 6: Simultaneity: Events may seem to occur in tandem, but change the viewpoint, and they occur in sequence. In one day four will meet, three will fight, many will die, and worlds will burn in the name of liberty. The Archangel must learn to rise again.
1. Tutelage: Extreme Forces

**This is the story of Garrus Vakarian, but not the one you know. **

**This is the story of the Archangel, but not the one you know. **

**This is the story of one against many, of morality against reality, and of how sometimes to serve the light, one must strike from the dark.**

**This is the story of Garrus Vakarian, Archangel of Justice, the Dark Knight of Omega.**

* * *

**Tutelage: Extreme Forces**

_And as the Damned Soul rises... _

_...so does the Fire._

_- Rimbaud_

**AA**

Among the sea of spinning stones, some the size of grains of sand, and others the size of starships, one stands out. It is larger than the rest, its surface uneven with cracks and canyons left over from when the core was cracked open and its riches stripped out. More importantly, one can see it is inhabited.

The asteroid's most prominent feature is obviously the long spire jutting out from the asteroid like a cancerous growth left long unchecked, a tumor that has long since drained the host body dry and now plays host to the nearly infinite host of parasites still stranded on the dead corpse. Only the most basic concept of a civilization is present, layers upon layers of detritus collapsing atop each other to form something akin to a hive. And like any hive, it has its workers and it has its Queen.

This place has many names, feared and reviled like a feral beast just waiting to tear out of its cage, embraced and welcomed like an old lover long lost. Heart of Evil, Place of Secrets, World Without Law, Land of Opportunity, it is all of these things and none. This place has many titles, all of them only grasping the barest fraction of this place's identity, but it wasn't until the emergence of humanity that it truly earned its name.

The new species called this place Omega, after the last letter in an antiquated alphabet, the symbolical representation of the final designation in a structured pattern. To them, this place was nothing but the end of all roads, the last destination in a journey with only one stop, the concluding chapter in a story with no happy ending. Most can agree the name is quite fitting.

Omega justifies itself by claiming to free of the delusions of "law" and "order". It is the sum total of each species in their most primal state, the nexus through which a million vices and desires all cross paths to form a madman's delusions of paradise. Omega is supposedly the one place where one can truly liberate themselves from the pathetic delusions of society, where they can truly cast off the invisible chains as binding as the small microbomb implanted at the base of every Hegemony slave's brain stem. It is only on Omega that one can experience the short, brutal, torturous gift that was true freedom.

It is a lie of course, the strong still took and the weak still suffered, same as anywhere else, the only difference is that Omega is the one place that isn't willing to mask it. On the Citadel, you might become enslaved by heaping financial debt in far more subtly and far more efficiently than iron shackles. On Illium, you might be unwittingly signed into a four year contract of indentured servitude after having bought the pretty asari sales rep's lies wholesale. At least Omega had the "decency" to fit the control collar over your neck and sell you into slavery for upwards of five thousand credits. At least on Omega you'll know just how much you're worth, and just where exactly you fit into the system.

Contrary from what the majority of the galaxy might believe, Omega is far from chaotic. True, what little governance it possessed was seized at gunpoint, but the people are still divided based on the same things: money, and its close counterpart, power. And just like anywhere else, for so very long the only thing still keeping the wheels turning has been the paralyzing fear of those in power. Any dissonance in the system is swiftly and brutally crushed, and the fear of reprisal keeps the rest in check. Never have the people managed to rise above their many masters, and it is unlikely they ever will.

But lately, a pall seems to have fallen upon the highest strata of Omega, the mercenary lords, slaver barons, exiled terrorists, and the like. More and more, those who once deemed themselves untouchable are casting their eyes downward, as if in fear of a nonexistent sky. They stir in their sleep, as if something is watching them. They walk in illuminated places, intrinsically avoiding the shadows as if afraid of what might be lurking in the unseen spaces.

They know something is hunting them. They know they are not safe.

**AA**

"Jaroth got nabbed." said Sev, one of two ordered to guard the warehouse's main entrance.

"Jaroth?" asked Firn, his interest piqued. "The salarian pissplate smuggler?"

"Yeah."

"Bullshit."

Sev looked offended for a moment. "No really," he said, "the whole smuggling ring, just gone."

"You need to lay off the Hallex," the batarian replied, a grin on his face, "Shit's startin' to get to you if you believe that."

"Heard it from one of Jenka's boys," Sev retorted, "Him and like twenty of his top guys get beaten to within half an inch of their life, then left dangling off the lamps lining Gozu. Almost his entire line of command, trussed up like fuckin pigs.."

The batarian blinked his lower eyes, grin wiped clean off. "Jaroth's Head Yellow," he shot back, "Bastard's got enough pull on Omega to haul it into the sun. No way one of the other three actually grew the balls to take him down."

Sev rolled his eyes. "Then why is there double the guard detail out tonight? Something's got the boss spooked." He then waggled his eyebrows mischievously, "Something like, I don't know, an untouchable like Head Yellow himself getting the absolute crap kicked out of him? And don't tell me Tarak or the others are behind it," Sev snorted, "Then we would really see shit hit the fan."

Firn now began to see a modicum of truth in the bullshit spewing from his companion's mouth. "Say it's true," Firn skeptically replied, "Who could possibly be that stupid? Who else could even get _close_ to Head Yellow?"

Now was Sev's turn to smile. "Who else?"

Firn grinned again and laughed in disbelief, a harsh rasping sound echoing out over the empty street. "_Bullshiiiiiiit_," he barked out, "You almost had me there," the batarian thumped his companion on the back, "The thing about the guard detail was a nice touch."

"It's true," Sev levelly replied, "All of Jaroth's men, Jaroth included, were left alive. Who else on Omega would do that?"

"Yeah," Firn was well aware of Sev's notable reputation for bullshit. Many a Suns grunt had come into the barracks almost wetting themselves from the human's imagined horrors. "Next you'll tell me that Aria's been with Tevos, and the pictures are all over this month's Fornax."

"You don't believe he's real," Sev asked. It wasn't not a question, simply a statement of fact.

The batarian ruefully nodded. "In the _Nalak Nalsul_? The Spirit of Justice? The Good Ghost of Omega?" He now dropped his voice to that of a whisper, "the _Archangel_?"

He snarled. "Idiot. It's just more rumors Aria spreads so the mercs think twice before crossing her. To fool more dumbshit mercs like you into thinking there's anything on this station that can stop the Suns."

"Aw screw you," The human laughed. It was obvious Firn wasn't going to take the bait. "That's the problem with you squints, no imagination."

"Human believes in fucking fairy tales," Firn snorted, "And the squint has the problem?"

"He's real," The human laughed again. "Savek'll back me up on that. He saw the bastard swinging from a smokestack in Jolarch." Firn chuckled he thumbed the comm for his fellow Sunny. "Savek," he disdainfully called out, "don't tell me you're buyin' into this ghost too."

Silence.

The batarian sighed in frustration. "Standard Sun piece of-," He poked his head into the warehouse entrance. "Sarge!" Firn hollered, "Com's on the fritz again, gonna need you to get the tech off his fat ass and take a look at it.."

More silence.

Turning back to his companion...

Firn found himself alone.

Firn began to grow anxious "H-hey man where'd you go?" He tried to ignore the sudden waver in his voice, "Boss' gonna have our asses on a platter if he finds out we left our post..."

The silence begins to grow ever more ominous.

And, a trick of the light, surely, the shadows cast by the dingy street lamps begin to grow.

Slowly, Firn began to feel the icy tendrils of fear starting creep into his chest. Damn Sev and his stories...

He turned back into the doorway to again yell for the Sergeant.

And then he saw it. Seven feet tall, it seemed, lifting Sergeant Harn clear off by his chestplate collar. Fellow Suns were strewn all about them, and Firn couldn't tell if they were alive or dead. He saw the Sergeant's eyes, that of a bitter old batarian who saw his arm blown off at the slaughterhouse that was Torfan, filled only with fear. Who the fuck was this? Who could take out half a company just coming back from a tour in the Traverse without a sound? Then, Firn heard the voice.

Only a whisper, yet it cut through the deafening silence like a knife through silk. It spoke in flawless _Khar'sovi, _too well for a simple translator, the language reserved solely for the upper castes of the Hegemony. It spoke to the submissive instinct ingrained in all lower citizens of the Hegemony, to kneel before their betters.

"_Where?", _whispered the sum total of every merc's fears.

Harn, to his credit, remained silent.

"_You know who I am,"_ said the shadow. It was obviously not a question.

Harn barely managed to nod. Still observing, Firn had found himself paralyzed by a primal fear his kind hadn't felt since they were huddled around the first fires, fearfully staring at the dark places and whispering warnings of the _Nalak Nalsul _in the prehistory of the batarian people. This was more than just anxiety, or surprise. This was something instinctual, primal, as natural a response as prey freezing at the sight of a predator waiting to pounce.

"_You know what I do to people like you."_

The sergeant nodded again. Seemingly mustering the tattered remnants of his courage, Harn responded in guttural _Khar'shursi_, the Khar'Shani commoner's tongue. Even in the face of certain doom, the old-timer still respected caste tradition. If only Firn could have mustered up that kind of willpower. "Yeah," he grunted back, "And I know you don't kill. So mess me up all you like, _freak_, you won't get me to talk."

"_No?" _whispered the shadow, who then tightened his grip.

"Never," Harn gasped, "So you can fuck right the hell off and go back to shaking down sandblasted pissplates."

The _thing_ held its impassive gaze at the choking batarian. It did not seem fazed in the slightest. More likely, it had expecting him to say that.

With hands shaking so badly he thought he might be going into cardiac arrest, Firn pulled the worn out Avenger off his back. He sighted, then fired a short burst while desperately trying to keep his eyes open. Unfortunately, the shots went wild from his trembling aim, and all that he accomplished was pockmarking the surrounding walls. The _shade_ didn't seem to notice. Two point two seconds later, the rifle exploded in Firn's dumbfounded expression and shards of hot metal were lodged in his exposed eyes.

Firn screamed in agony and dropped to the floor, desperately scrabbling at his shredded face to try and rip the molten pieces out. Harn saw this _thing_ so effortlessly manage to dispatch yet another man under his command, and somehow managed to look even angrier than his previous expression of maddened fury. "Fuck you!" he managed to roar, "One of us will take you down, _vrot_!" A choice insult among his people.

The sergeant's future tirade was interrupted by a loud snap, and the batarian responded with a piercing scream.

"_That was a rib," _the shadow said,_ "Your species has sixteen. My current record of ribs broken before talking is eight. Care to match it?"_

Another snap. Another scream.

"Argh," Harn shouted through bleary eyes, "Rot in hell, you-!"

_Snap._ Harn screamed.

"_I cannot kill you,"_ said the shadow, still as calm as ever, "_But I can __**hurt **__you, and by the time I'm done, you'll be begging for the mercy of a quick death._ _I'll ask again, where_?"

"Tarak will find you, _vrot_!" the sergeant managed to reply, his voice little more than a pained hiss, "And then I'm gonna see how many ribs I can break before _you _scream!."

_Snap._ Harn screamed louder.

"_Either I cave in half your rib cage,"_ the shadow dryly intoned_ "or you tell me where."_

"Fu-"

_Snap._

"I don't-"

_Snap._

Like a damn breaking, any resistance was washed away. Harns tone became almost pleading, the pain now above and beyond anything he had ever experienced. Not even the humans on Torfan were this sadistic. "S-stop!" he stammered out, barely conscious by this point, "I don't know anything! We were just told to guard the warehouse, we don't know where the shipment's coming from!"

The _thing _procureed a datapad from its cloak. "_You sent a message to your direct superior asking to reaffirm the drop off coordinates. So again, where?"_

Silence.

_Snap._

A last scream, far longer and far louder than the rest.

And the sergeant went limp.

"_Seven ribs. Either very stubborn,"_ the shadow said to no one in particular,_ "or very stupid."_

The shade now advanced towards the half blind Firn, two eyes still bleeding profusely. It grabbed the guard by the throat and lifted him off the ground.

"N-no please," the guard managed to choke out. Fear had clearly broken him long before pain had been given the opportunity, "I don't know anything!"

Firn saw the slits of green narrow.

"_We'll see just how very much you **know**_" the word almost seemed to hit Firn like a physical blow,_ "I do hope you don't hold out on me. Something tells me you won't last seven ribs. Probably not even four."_

Firn was now _terrified_. He might have even soiled himself. "I swear to every god and Aria's blue ass crack and my whore mother and whatever the hell else you want me to that I have no idea about any shipment! I can't tell you anything because they don't tell _us_ anything!"

"_You_ _can,_" replied the shadow, who then drew Firn uncomfortably close,_ "and you will."_

That probably did not bode well for the unfortunate guard. From what he could guess, that lie would cost him in both the long and short-term. "You-you're him aren't you? The _Nalak-"_

"_A batarian title. I have many on this station. Although you may also know me by another name..."_

A cloak hid any external body features. The helmet was slanted back, little more than a blank faceplate bisected by four green diamond burning underneath. But more than the cape, more than the helm, more even than the fact that this _thing_ had beaten fifteen trained mercenaries and more almost bare-handed, the eyes were what Firn truly feared more than anything. The four green slits brought to mind nightmares long forgotten, fears forever unspoken, and gave the mercenary the sudden urge to call upon each and every one of the twenty two batarian gods for forgiveness,

"_Archangel."_

_Snap._


	2. Tutelage: Bitter Memories

**Tutelage: Bitter Memories**

_Three years ago._

The first sensation he feels is pain. Pain blocks out all other thoughts, all other memories. It is all he has ever known, and for a brief moment, his entire life has been nothing but the red hot hell of a billion nerves all screaming in impossible agony.

Then the world comes back into focus. He feels the restraints bite into his wrists. The knives protruding from his chest, his left arm little more than a bloody stump. He remembers he was born on Certia, a small city on Palaven's eastern continent. His clan colors are of Digeris colony, although his family moved back to the homeworld over a thousand years ago, after the Unification War. He joined C-Sec to follow in his father's footsteps, although it's now fair to say he has failed in that regard. He remembers the frustration that inevitably came with the job, he remembers every crime that went unpunished, every criminal who turned the system to their own advantage, every time the seemingly flawless system revealed another gaping hole. And for a long time, he remembers he felt worse than just angry- he felt helpless. But then, on a seemingly normal day, in the gardens of the Council with the lotus trees in bloom...

He remembers he met a hero. Not just a caricature for naive young children, but someone with the will to act in the defense of those who could not, willing to fight and sacrifice everything she was not just out of trite notions like duty or honor, but simply because it was _right_.

He remembers making an offer, and he remembers she accepted with guarded optimism. She was not naive, but all the same, she still wanted to trust him. He remembers vowing to himself that he would not disappoint.

He remembers being taken on the adventure of a lifetime. He remembers being a part of something much bigger than himself, for the first time belonging to a team so closely ingrained it could be argued they acted as a single person, with her acting as the titanium core. He remembers battle. Blood. Pain. _Loss_, as he witnessed his newfound friend and idol weep for the first time. Eventually, however, he remembers that they stood against impossible odds and still emerged the victors. It was the best day of his life, and it is a small comfort in knowing that no matter what happens, he will never forget that triumph.

Then come the less pleasant memories. He remembers fire, and falling. He remembers watching glittering gold lances tear the _Normandy_ apart, and he remembers the emptiness that followed. He remembers the funeral, on Mindoir as she would have liked, and remembers standing at her empty coffin and muttering a hollow prayer to some nameless power above. Although his tone was somber, his mood was vengeful.

Her death did not break him however, so he went back to the Citadel, with a hope that he could actually make a difference in this galaxy. He attacked his position with a newfound fervor, a drive that he once thought lost, but had been renewed by the greatest person he had ever met.

He is Garrus Vakarian. And then he remembers how he came to be here.

He remembers the hope, the _delusion_, become crushed once more within the span of a few months back at C-Sec. Even after the city had burned down, and something new had been built on the ashes, nothing had changed. He remembers cold bureaucracy still stopping him from doing a job that shouldn't be any simpler than the line between _right_ and _wrong_. He remembers watching all the same vices rule the day, greed, apathy, corruption, power and the people still carrying on like it all still _functioned_, that the system hadn't become a shambling husk surviving only because of how fearful change could be to the average person.

_First week is simple brutality. First, they shoot him in the kneecaps with his own pistol, his trusty Predator that had put bullets through geth, krogan. and a thousand other horrors for the good of the galaxy. He remains silent of course, so they turn to less...refined methods. When they finish with him he chuckles with blood pooling in his lungs and asks if they learned their methods from this month's issue of Fornax._

He remembers screaming in the Executor's face that C-Sec had forgotten that security and justice were two separate things. He remembers quitting in a blind rage, and getting an idea. It is crazy, idiotic even, but one he believed she would wholeheartedly approve, so he went to work. He severed all ties with friends and family to pursue a mad quest to help the helpless, to fight crime and corruption at its source, to bring _justice_ to those who escaped its iron reach.

_Second week they call in the virologist, a twisted little barefaced stunt of a turian who pumps all manner of viruses tailored only to inflict pain. He remembers the sensation of every vein in his body filling with liquid fire. It is a pain greater than he ever thought possible, and the only thing that allows him to endure is lapsing back into memories of happier times. When they finish with him he, half mad already, chokes out that he has come down with a slight cough._

He remembers the ship taking him to Omega, where in the first day he learned of a minor batarian slaver ring operating in Visvak district. It might not be much, but Garrus felt shutting it down would be a good place to start in cleaning up this pisshole station.

_They eventually realize he will die before he talks, that there is no way any of them can break him. But they have one last card to play, one last person to call..._

He had been hunting the slavers for weeks. He killed them in droves, but their numbers never seem to wane. He seized their shipments of drugs and burned them, he seized their shipments of slaves and released them into the streets of Omega, yet their profits didn't seem to have taken a significant hit. As the weeks passed, a familiar despair began to take hold, and it became clear he wasn't doing any lasting damage. One could not undo an empire alone, however small. He was about to abandon Omega to its sins, until he stumbled upon a warehouse, empty save for a single solitary container.

_The doctor._

Garrus couldn't believe what he has found. He knew he was now out of his depth, and forwarded the container's contents to nine people, the only ones he feels comfortable giving a modicum of trust. After seeing this, they were sure to follow him back here, they were sure to see just how necessary the fight here had become.

"_What do we have here?"_

And they have broken him.

It has been three weeks, but he does not know it. To him it has been an eternity, the rest of his life a clever lie his shattered mind tells itself just to give him the strength to last one more minute. While he appreciates the sentiment, he would rather his body just do him the favor and let him die.

"Mr. Vakarian." The doctor enters the room. The small little asari who, for the past two days, has been the closest thing Garrus has to a God. She still possesses that impassive look, as if Garrus were little more than a chore the doctor had left unattended. "Always a pleasure, I'm sure."

No answer. At first he retorted with his usual sarcastic demeanor that Shepard had found so endearing, but three weeks and six faceplates later, he had learned to keep his mouth shut.

"I will have you know that I am not in the best mood."

Not good. Garrus takes comfort in that he can't outright _see_ any implement of harm in the doctor's hands..

The madwoman continues, slowly pacing the room. "I have found," she said, "and eviscerated, all nine of the agents to whom you revealed the Arcadora. I think that sufficient enough to draw all suspicion away from my employers."

That's it then. Garrus has told the doctor everything. It barely even registers that he has betrayed nine good people, friends, colleagues. Skeptical fathers and husbands and wives and mothers he had dragged out to help him with one, _last_ case. It doesn't matter to him, because he will join them soon enough. Why feel guilt now when he had an eternity in hell?

She then reaches into his lab coat and pulls out a very long, very _sharp_, knife.

Garrus closes his eyes and weeps tears of joy, all pretense of bravado long since purged, at the thought that it would finally end.

"Yes, it's true Mr. Vakarian, I have all the information I need out of you."

A sob escapes the turian's shattered mouth.

"But it is _not_ over."

Time stops.

"You see, Mr. Vakarian, that is why I am so upset. Normally when a subject has served its purpose, once I am sure I have obtained all the information I need out of it, I dispose it. Throw it into one of the protein vats the keepers are so very fond of. But not you, Mister Vakarian. Not you. I see your ruinous wreck of a body, and I cannot bear to simply toss it out like garbage."

She leans in close. He tries to scramble away his head is held tight against the table. "I have formed an attachment to you," she whispers, with eyes wide and constantly licking her lips, "I _like_ to see you hurt, I want to continue to see you hurt, and I cannot think of a more euphoric heaven than one in which I can eternally observe you writhing under my knife."

The doctor's eyes narrow in anger, the whisper now becoming a _hiss_. "You see what you have done? You have made me one of _them_, brought me down to _their_ level. You are not the only victim of this ordeal, you selfish, selfish boy. Oh no, it seems that you have now reduced me to the level of your common psychopath, little better than an abused child with a grudge and mother issues."

The knife flashes again, and she draws it along his remaining arm, blue blood seeping out in a thin line.

She stabs downward, leaving it embedded in the upper arm. Garrus doesn't notice. It is nothing more than a wound. If this entire ordeal has taught him anything, it is the true definition of pain. "I am _more_," she continued to hiss, "My job is to inflict pain, and I am very good at my job. Nothing more."

He is silent. Speech would extol a higher price than he could pay.

The doctor pulls the knife free. She steps back from the slab, her face once more the neutral mask. "Mr. Vakarian, it appears that the extreme level of torture I have been hired to perform on you has had the unfortunate side effect of driving me somewhat mentally unstable. Thus, for the sake of my sanity, you must die."

Then it is true, it is the end. Oh praise every spirit!

"But your death need not be quick, nor painless."

She brandishes the knife again, ready to commence her work for the last time.

Garrus closes his eyes...

No prayers. No goodbyes. His last thought is as simple as they come: _I'm sorry Shepard._

The wall behind the good doctor explodes.

He figures it to simply be yet another hallucination, another lucid dream his subconscious has fed him in a desperate attempt to give him the willpower to take one more breath. It would not be the first, and probably wouldn't have the decency to be the last either.

The dust settles, and Garrus sees another asari, clad in a skintight red suit, standing over the doctor, foot over her throat. After about a minute, the newcomer speaks in a voice that immediately puts Garrus' tortured mind and body at ease, like cool water falling on hot stones. "I have found the Arcadora," the newcomer intones, "Where is the activation code?"

The doctor merely laughs, or _tries_ to, considering her obstructed windpipe. "You will _never_ find it," she gasps, "You can search for the rest of your thousand years, _jusiticar_, as can your daughter, as can her daughter, and so on for a thousand generations and still it will stay outside your reach. You can scour every world circling every star in the sky, and you will _never, ever, ever _find it."

"_Tell me." _The newcomer replied as she increased the pressure on her heel.

"Go to hell."

Unfazed, the asari in red whispers, "_Kupata amani na m'shikamano."_

The laughter abates for a moment. And for that moment, the doctor appears almost...sad.

But then she laughs again, eyes wide and twitching. The asari in red idly twists her heel, and the doctor is silenced.

Garrus finds this dream to be far less strange than usual, he must have passed out before the doctor administered the usual adrenals to keep him alert of the pain.

The asari in red now turns his attention to him, and again, she appears unfazed. She looks once to him, then to the doctor's corpse, then back again.

"You are Garrus Vakarian?"

It takes all his willpower to nod. To dare breach the doctor's code of conduct.

"I am Samara. And it seems the Goddess favors you this day."

Garrus wonders if this is the last straw. If this final dream heralds the end of his sanity. If so, it is one he welcomes the madness with open arms.

He feels one of the hooks in his cowl come free with a wet sucking noise, and before darkness takes him in a cold embrace, Garrus Vakarian has one last idle thought.

_Oh yes, this was a very good dream._

**And here we truly begin our first arc: that of Archangel's beginnings.**


	3. Tutelage: Harsh Truths

**And here we begin Garrus's training. The genesis of the legend of Archangel.**

**Tutelage: Harsh Truths**

It has been three months, he has not spoken a word and the supplicants of the monastery have responded in kind. He spends most of his time either meditating in the central chamber, always alone, or reading verses from the Justicia Codexa. He does both these things to try and gain a better understanding of where his views fit in the wider galaxy, searching for answers both within himself and without. The long silence has done him well. He believes copious amounts of dextro-based alcohol would do him better.

So after one month of quiet solitude, Garrus Vakarian is slightly taken aback when he sees a fairly large Argavian style statue of the triune goddess Athame being hurled through the three meter wide doorway and directly at him.

Instincts still as sharp as only a four year service in the Hierarchy as squad sniper can make them, he breaks out of his meditative trance and rolls out of the way just in time. He hears the half-ton heavy sculpture whistle past his head as years of training and instinct kick in. He adopts a ready combat stance and assesses his surroundings. Strangely, he notices that he has heard no noise from the statue hitting the wall. Garrus looks back and sees the improvised projectile being carefully biotically levitated between two supplicants. Now utterly baffled, he looks back to the doorway to see the asari in red.

He is now completely lost. Garrus has seen not seen the asari, Samara, since she had left him half-dead at the care of the supplicants of the monastery. Before, he was content to simply sit in silence, but the sudden attempt to murder him has sparked a sudden desire for answers.

Before he can ask the first of a thousand questions, she speaks.

"Good, you passed."

Garrus finds his voice again, neglected for some time now. "What the hell was _that_?"

Samara blinks. She answers in that same calm, neutral tone. "A test."

His voice is now a low hiss. "For _what_?"

She calmly strides over to him and sits cross-legged on the floor, and motions for him to join her. "Please know that I meant you no harm by it, but it was necessary."

Still wary, Garrus moves to face directly across from her. He remains standing.

"It is understandable that you remain skeptical."

Garrus clacks his mandibles. His voice is now approaching that of a roar. "You just threw a very big _statue_ at my head. What kind of test could that even _be_?"

"To determine if you were healing. I brought you to this place with very grievous wounds, Garrus Vakarian, both physical and mental. The pain you had to undergo would have broken most. So when I learn that you have spent the last month in total silence without inquiring as to where you are or how you came to be here, I had to assume the worst."

"That I was, what, crazy?"

"No, rather to determine if you still possessed the will to live. It is a very simple test, calling to the most primal parts of your being. If you wished to continue living, you would have instinctively dodged the statue. If you sought an end to your suffering, you would have simply remained rooted to the spot, unable to see the value in surviving one more day. And I would have done you a mercy."

"And if I was simply too slow?"

Samara now beckons for the two supplicants to leave the room, they set the large statue down and biotically close the two large doors to the meditation chamber behind them. She looks back at Garrus and answers with a cold stare. "Every action you make is deliberate and decisive, Garrus Vakarian, you either do or you do not. There is no middle ground for you."

He is still wary. Although he does see some truth in Samara's _test_, as she called it. And that puts a small part of Garrus at ease. It is good to know that he has not subconsciously given up yet. "And how do you know me so well?"

"I see much of my younger self in you, Garrus. Once I too believed in action over deliberation."

Cryptic, wonderful. Garrus now believes it to be a suitable point to change topic before she starts commenting on the dark and violent path he has taken. On how that outlook was what had him chained to a concrete slab, subjected to the worst punishment any sapient mind could devise.

At last he joins Samara on the floor. "I have other questions."

Her tone now becomes far softer, moving away from cold indifference and towards what seems to be slight amusement. "Of course. I should think we have much to discuss."

Of course the more relevant questions come first. "Where am I?"

Samara now visibly relaxes as soon as she sees Garrus no longer perceives her as a threat. "Lessus. An isolated world on the fringes of asari space. This is a small monastery meant to house and train young supplicants who wish to undergo the rites necessary to become a justicar."

Hm. Garrus would have guessed Cyone or maybe even one of the core Republic worlds. To have a justicar temple not in inner asari space was, odd he supposed. Honestly, Garrus wasn't very knowledgeable when it came to ancient alien warrior monks dedicated to enforcing the laws of a long dying religion. He supposed it didn't matter. There were more pertinent questions to ask. "All right, why did you bring me here? Any med center in Citadel space would do."

"The body can heal Garrus, but the mind is not always so resilient." She replies. "I suspected you needed quiet contemplation as much as immediate surgery. Speaking of which, how is your arm?"

Garrus flexes his cybernetic limb. The med staff had insisted on replacing his severed arm with cloned tissue, but he had firmly insisted they stick to bionics. He wanted the world to see the price he had paid for his mistakes, to see that he had indeed lost a part of himself. Garrus suspected that the justicar knew as much. "It fits like a glove."

Samara raises a brow in puzzlement.

Oh right. She probably doesn't get out of asari space much. "Old human saying. Back to the matter at hand, how did you find me and why did you save me? You were clearly after the Arcadora, and nowhere does it say in your Code that you needed to save me.""

The answer is given somewhat reluctantly. "While my Code did not call for me to save you, it did not demand I leave you to die. It was in that ambiguity that I was forced to make a choice. From when I first saw and from what I later learned of you, Garrus Vakarian, I determined you to be an individual worth saving. I am pleased to say I was correct in that regard."

"How so?"

"You chose to fight the M'saieo, one of the most brutal and sadistic of the asari criminal guilds, without any motivation for glory or profit. You simply realized they possessed the capability to cause great harm, and set out to deny them."

"Not deliberately." He admits. "At first I just thought I was just taking down batarian slavers."

"But you did discover who they were selling the Arcadora to."

He interrupts with yet another question. "Yeah, how do you know about that?"

"I had been hunting the M'saieo in pursuit of a dangerous...individual. They aided a fugitive I was pursuing in her escape off Omega. During my hunt, I learned of the Arcadora, much like you did, and my Code demanded I stop them. May I continue?"

Garrus nods, and she resumes. "At that point you could have given up the fight, realized your foe was far too powerful to combat. And yet you pursued them regardless, even at the risk of great personal injury to yourself. Altruism, an admirable and increasingly rare quality in the galaxy."

That drives many unbidden depressing thoughts back to the forefront of his mind. Garrus merely whispers, "I just wanted to help."

Samara now adopts a look of understanding. "Yes, that was why a reputable C-Sec officer was on a very disreputable station. You were trying to fight the corruption so prevalent on Omega, in the only way you knew how."

"Yes." He replies.

"And are you still willing to continue this impossible task? Are you still willing to enforce order to a place specifically created to be without law?"

And that was the million credit question. Was the fight still even possible? Choosing his words carefully, Garrus at last responds, "I-I want to. Really, I do."

"But?"

He grimaces. "Seeing what these people are capable of, how much pain they can truly inflict on a person, it makes me wonder if I could ever hurt them back. I'm just one person. I can't take on all of Omega, maybe even all the Terminus."

"If I may offer a word of advice?"

"Yeah?"

"You have no idea what you are doing."

Now his mandibles flare up in anger. "_What?_"

"I imagine you set out to help the innocent of Omega. To bring justice, a goal you and I both share to an extent." He nods, and Samara continues. "But that goal is fundamentally flawed."

Now he is just confused. "And what's wrong with helping the helpless?"

"Because there is no such thing as innocence on Omega. Only degrees of guilt. If you were on the Citadel or Palaven, where abiding by the rules of society is defined as "right" and deliberately breaking said rules are defined as "wrong" then yes, you will find individuals who have committed no wrong."

Understanding begins to dawn on Garrus. "But on Omega..." he says, "that kind of outlook gets you killed."

"Indeed Garrus. When you live in a world that will destroy you at the first sign of weakness, you must become as ruthless as those around you. It is not a conscious choice, simply a necessary adaptation to survive in that environment."

Memories now begin to return. Ones he rather didn't. "Yeah I saw that when I was chasing down those slavers. Any time I killed one of them they would just replace him with the next dumb bastard who could hold a gun."

"But that is not the real problem."

"And what is? That I was stupid enough to even try this?"

"No, it is a worthy pursuit, and not one you should surrender lightly. One such flaw in your plan was fighting the slavers with their own methods. By beating and killing them as would a common criminal, you become just that. One more criminal. To them you are the same foe they fight every day to maintain their power. Nothing new to Omega, and so barely worth any significance."

"And how else can I fight them? How else can I bring them down?"

"The answer to that is tied to yet another dilemma. Do you know where the corrupt of society derive their power?"

An unusual question with a seemingly obvious answer.

"Uh...their guns?"

Samara responds with a dismissive shake of her head. She continues. "Fear. Should the poor and misbegotten masses of Omega rise up against those who have hurt and abused them then I imagine Aria would not remain "queen" for long. What allows her and the other groups to hold dominance is instilling the notion into the common man that to resist them is suicide. And when any challenge that, they are then left in a very small minority, much like you were, and are then easily crushed and made an example of."

A hint of desperation now begins to creep into Garrus's voice. "So it's hopeless? When everyone's a criminal, the closest thing to wrong is when some are just slightly more cruel than usual, and I'm seen as just a common merc that only adds to the problem, how can I possibly make a difference?"

Now Samara rises to her feet. "Every problem has a solution. Always. And, conveniently, the multiple problems you face in your quest all share the same solution. A man can be killed, he can be captured and shot and tortured. But an idea, Garrus, is invulnerable and immortal. To truly make a difference, you must become something more, a symbol that the hopeless can believe in, that the oppressor can truly fear, and that the lost can look for guidance when they ask themselves if what they are doing is morally right."

The thought is daunting, almost impossible even. When he set out Garrus simply thought he would be shooting more mercs, not establishing the concept of order in a land founded upon chaos. He replies, "And how would you know anything about that?"

The question is answered with a wry smirk. "I am a justicar, a member of an monastic order founded over four thousand years ago. Since that time my people have mastered faster-than-light travel, founded the basis of galactic civilization, and have almost entirely rejected the goddess which is said to have written the Code itself. Yet still, the asari believe us to be the embodiments of our highest laws, even when they no longer believe in the goddess who supposedly _wrote_ those laws. I am well acquainted with adopting a symbolic significance. I can teach you how to as well, if you wish."

Now Garrus is intrigued, past torments forgotten as he considers the possibilities. "And why help me? Why help a naive idiot who you saw carved like butcher's meat just three months ago?"

Samara's smirk now widens into a smile. "As I said before, I determined you to be an individual worth saving. You have a force of will matched by few others, and I believe if you are able to apply that will in the right ways, you can indeed, make a difference."

"But that doesn't answer why you're willing to teach me."

"I will teach you, Garrus Vakarian, because I believe in you. That should be answer enough."

"Not to me."

"Then perhaps I may further elaborate, should you accept my offer. Will you, knowing full well that the path it will set you brings only pain and suffering?"

His response is instant. This is what he has been truly looking for since he first threw his badge back in Pallin's face . "Yes."

"Good, then we begin immediately."

Samara turns to the large doors behind her, and they open unbidden. She beckons for Garrus to follow her, and he obliges.

And a legend begins.

**Next chapter we begin Garrus's training, for real. Please review!**


	4. Tutelage: Painful Lessons

**This chapter will mostly deal with Garrus's physical and psychological training. **

**Tutelage: Painful Lessons**

Although he would have several teachers to help guide him, Garrus would always consider the asari in red to be his mentor, his savior. Despite all that would later occur.

_She is justice, the right hand of Athame and enforcer of her divine will._

His time with Samara was short, brutal, and taught him more than his entire service in the turian military, career as a C-Sec detective, and brief stint of hunting down one of the most dangerous individuals in the galaxy combined.

Over eight months and thousands of hours of grueling, almost torturous training the justicar rebuilt Garrus from the ground up. She put him in situations forced to push Garrus to limits that he didn't even know he possessed, and then push even further. Sometimes he stayed conscious through sheer force of will.

_Justice does not rule or serve, only act in the defense of the innocent._

He underwent each trial a supplicant must undergo, the seven of the Body and the twelve of the Mind. And like the rest of his time at the monastery, they only increased in difficulty.

Those of the Body were strictly physical. He practiced in twelve combat styles and fourteen martial weapons. He was fed hallucinogens and sparred with opponents who never held back, every move a killer blow, any mistake made potentially fatal.

He endured freezing blizzards clothed only in a rough wool tunic. He dived down into ocean trenches to retrieve flawless _o'raesi_ pearls. Over time, Garrus honed his body into a weapon unto itself, able to kill a man as surely as any firearm.

_Justice is composed of iron. It does not know sleep nor hunger nor thirst. It knows only of the wrongs committed in its absence. _

But it was the trials of the Mind that truly tested him. They forced Garrus to look in his least favorite direction: inward. To determine if he was undergoing this out of a true dedication to fighting the evil and corrupt. Locked in a small cell for days, Garrus would meditate on his past actions, his present training, and where that would take him in the future.

What little free time he had would be spent reading. The _Justicia Codex_, the famed turian lawmaker Jalius Cesarax's _Twelve Tomes of Hierarchy_, even salarian works that Garrus could barely comprehend. Anything to further his understanding of law and order, for how else could he bring it to a place that laughed at the concept?

_Justice is anathema to the wicked. It is the blinding light to burn the darkness clean._

And then came the real training, how to truly make an impact in Omega's psyche. These lessons were taught directly by Samara, and always in that large meditation chamber. Together they dueled with naked blades while she lectured.

"Become a myth to the criminal, become a rumor they whisper to scare their fellows, and you have won the war. Slowly Garrus, simple word of mouth will cause the legend to grow to ludicrous heights. By the time you face them the gullible scum will believe you to be death incarnate, here to mete out their eternal punishment. All you need to do is plant the seed, that you are something elemental, and that none of them are safe. Exaggeration and misdirection are your most potent weapons."

And finally, after he had successfully hunted down and incapacitated seventeen supplicants in the neighboring forest, Samara had told him he was ready.

_Justice is absolute. No mercy can be shown to the corrupt and to do so is to invite corruption unto the self._

Garrus was led into a wing of the monastery he had never ventured into before. Gone were the pristine white walls and graceful arches. Here there was dirt and grime and an undertone of suffering. A prison then, but why would a monastery need to hold captives?

She led him past row upon row of empty cell, until they at last came upon what appeared to be the sole prisoner of the room is dark, and cold. Within lies a lone asari, a young maiden that couldn't have been more than twenty years old. But what truly confused him was the look upon Samara's face. Where she normally wore the same neutral expression, now he could see outright _hatred_ in her eyes. At last Garrus asked, "Master, who is this?"

Her response is curt, and dripping with venom. "A fugitive. And your final test."

"I don't understand."

Samara now turns to him. Her eyes are once more blank, and her voice once more measured and controlled. "I have not been entirely honest with you, as my Code demanded. This temple is not simply for training prospective justicars, but also to watch over a nearby prison housing extremely dangerous individuals. Should any of these prisoners escape, it is this temple's duty to find and capture them."

"And you send them back?"

No her tone creeps a few more degrees towards anger. "No. By making the conscious choice to escape, their lives are now forfeit."

Garrus is slightly taken aback. He looks again to the prisoner and sees only pleading innocence in her eyes. "That seems unnecessarily harsh, at least for this girl. She seems far too young to commit a crime not worthy of a second chance."

He notices that Samara's tone has grown slightly more hostile. "This..._thing_ is far past any hope of redemption. Simply allowing this abomination to exist was mercy enough. That it overstepped that warrants its immediate destruction."

None of this makes sense. "Master, what exactly is she guilty of?"

Outright anger is now apparent on his teacher's face. "That is irrelevant. This is the last task every justicar must undergo, the Final Trial of the Anima. The Code demands her death. End her, and your training is complete. Become justice incarnate"

He should have been happy. This is what all his training has led to, since the moment he followed Samara out of the meditation chamber. To become justice incarnate, to prove he had the conviction necessary to reshape the galaxy itself. Then why did it feel so wrong?

His reply is instinctive, and it makes him briefly believe if he has been given hallucinogens. "No."

Samara blinks. "Spare her and it will break you. The criminal feeds off the mercy of society to sustain him. Let even one of them live, and you are already lost."

Garrus is at a loss for words.

Six supplicants then appear out of the darkness. One of them hands something to Samara, who simply nods. She faces Garrus and holds out a small pistol.

It is small, old, and worn. A Predator design, high fire rate but low stopping power. But at the range this task demands, that will make little difference. And only upon further observation, upon seeing the long scratch along the left side, does Garrus realize it is _his_ gun. His trusty companion that Shepard had constantly mocked, always playfully berating him for still holding on to the rusted piece of junk.

The pistol recalls memories he had long since buried. Of Tali's shy voice always so hesitant to voice her concerns. Of Wrex's deep rumbling laugh at the end of a good fight. Of Shepard's smile, brighter than the Normandy's drive core...

He misses them all. Shepard most of all. It seems almost a lifetime ago, not just seven months.

In a daze, Garrus takes the pistol from Samara's outstretched hand. He notes the ammo capacity, one more shot before overheat.

But then he remembers what became of that pistol. How just as easily as when he fought at Shepard's side, it was turned against him. Garrus realizes that any kind of sentimentality he had for the weapon vanished when it fired two rounds into his knees.

And just like that, his choice is clear.

"I will not."

Samara's nostrils flare in indignation. The surrounding supplicants show no outward reaction. "Then you are weak. Unwilling to make the commitment necessary to-"

"No!" He shouts. "I used to think killing was a solution. I thought that was how I was going to help Omega, just clean out the criminal element. But then I saw what too much death eventually does to a person. It wears you down, brings you down to _their_ level to a point when the only difference between you and _them_ is ideology. And that's not enough for me."

"Your hands are long since sullied, Garrus Vakarian. You have taken enough lives that for you to suddenly renounce lethal force is outright hypocrisy."

Spirits damn it, half of his reasons don't even make sense. But he knows this is the right decision. "I need to be better. Like you said I need to be more than just a killer to these people. I can't justify taking these people's lives, and then claiming I'm somehow better than them. _That's_ the real hypocrisy."

"And this is your final decision?"

"It's no different than your Code. Obeying a set of rules. This is just my own rule."

"A lie. This is not some great moral stand. It is simply residual trauma from your torture. Your psyche forces you to hesitate."

"Maybe. Or maybe I've seen where that road really leads..."

"Then you are naive. Do you think your enemies will extend you the same courtesy?"

Seven months ago, Garrus would have agreed with her. But seven months ago he had two arms and the galaxy made sense.

"No. And I think that's the point."

"Then you shall be crushed, just as you were before."

Fury etched on her face, she raises the pistol to the young maiden's head...

In a heartbeat, Garrus makes his choice.

Shock is evident on Samara's face, as she discovers the weapon to now be in Garrus's hand.

Her voice has dropped somewhere between a growl and a snarl. "You would die for this creature? Are you so easily fooled by its facade?"

"Yes. And I do so gladly."

She blinks.

"So be it."

The fight is short and brutal. And by the end of it there remains only master and student, the other supplicants lying scattered around them. There is no acknowledgement that he was her greatest student, no tearful goodbye, nothing but violence.

Conflict was joined, and Garrus is doomed.

He knows that to lose this fight was to lose his life. He has defended one of the corrupt, several sutras of the Code demand his death. And he is losing. Blow after blow goes unblocked. Any kind of offense is redirected. The justicar truly is master of her craft, and there is no way that he can ever beat her. Not when he has trained six months and she centuries. Luckily, he learned something with Shepard that Samara could never teach.

To fight dirty.

His omnitool sends an electrical pulse directly into her central nervous system. Soundlessly Samara collapses, and the fight ends as quickly as it began. Bruised and beaten, Garrus hobbles over to the maiden and unties her restraints. She does not thank him, she does not even seem to notice him, as she bolts out the cell door and out of sight.

As Garrus leaves the temple, no supplicant moves to stop him. They can only act under the direction of a justicar, and she is incapacitated. In silence, he walks out the temple door, into the cold, ready to begin the next phase of his life.

Despite all the temple has done for him, he never looks back.

**I may have glossed over certain aspects of Garrus's training, but they will be told in detail over certain flashbacks.**


	5. Foundation: The Expectation

**And here we start with Garrus beginning (been using that word a lot it seems) to transition to his Archangel persona. Note that there is going to be a time skip here, as Samara wasn't his only teacher, which I will later expand on.**

**Foundation: The Expectation**

**AA**

Modified set of Viri Mark VIII Urban Combat Armor, refitted with a synth-diamond monomolecular outer shell and a reinforced defense matrix to further supplement already formidable kinetic barriers? Check.

Twin Apophis Rapid Channeling Omnitools bedecked with a multitude of gadgets including scaled back Hegemony SIU Enforcement Gauntlets, illegal STG Deep Freeze Tech, carbo-nanotubule grappling cables, and even experimental salvaged geth hacking routines? Check.

Soft-light cloak, to conceal both his body shape and further build upon his necessary image? Check. He believed a hologram of a cape to be the most suitable attire, both maintaining the theatricality without sacrificing any practicality.

And lastly, helmet, complete with ORACLE combat interface? Check. He felt it seal with a soft _hiss_. And with that _hiss_, he ceased to be Garrus and became something else entirely.

He was now ready. For better or for worse.

**AA**

Looking back, no one can really point to the first story, the first sighting of the Good Ghost. It seemed to happen so gradually, his deeds at first blending so perfectly into the backdrop of violence and hate Omega was famous for the galaxy over, that no one even noticed that he was actually here to improve the situation until much later. Gradually, imperceptibly to the public eye, rumor became fact, and a ghost story became a more real and present threat to the gangs than anything else Omega could vomit up. When asked, people will just answer that there was a time when he wasn't here, and a time when he was. No spectacular entrance, no random spree of every crime lord on the station suddenly getting their just reward. The truth of how it really began would die with Archangel. Only he would remember the innumerable unsung battles and deeds.

It began, as with almost everything on Omega, with the vermin.

At first Garrus believed he should start with the minor gangs dotting the upper levels, work his way up until he had the necessary experience and information to eventually take the bigger players down. When he set out from the Citadel, with shiny blue armor and a pristine M-79 Viper rifle, he thought it really would be that simple. The doctor, and everything else that came after, changed that.

If there was one thing Garrus learned while on that slab, it was that this task was impossible for just one man to undertake. That no matter how well trained, how durable, how determined, trying to undertake this task by himself was simply impossible. He had no connections to gather information, no network to alert him to ongoing crimes, and no headquarters to coordinate his operation. To succeed in waging this war he needed support, no less than an army to supply the what he so critically lacked.

And Garrus knew just where to look.

Bersaad had lectured him on the power of the bottom rung of society. Those turned out into the streets and left to fester with the rest of the rotting filth. He taught Garrus how they passed unseen in the places anyone else would stick out, how they were willing to work far harder for far less in return. And best of all, how the poorest of the poor almost universally reviled the world that had by and large abandoned them.

Anywhere else in the galaxy, that would mean the homeless, the beggars, the addicts. On Omega those kind of people were more middle class than bottom of the barrel. To depend on them was the same as depending on getting stabbed in the back. No, Garrus needed to go even deeper, to a part of Omega considered so low as to not even be considered a rung on the ladder, more like the refuse pooling at its base. To a group that no sane individual would ever turn to, vigilante or not.

And that was how Garrus Vakarian, donned in his soon-to-be-famous trademark outfit, descended down into the vorcha pits.

If Omega was the galaxy's pisshole, then the vorcha pits were Omega's. The vorcha live in bloodlines called nests, and the nests are centered around the few areas on the station so filthy that the maintenance crews don't even bother to recycle oxygen. It is also the only place that vorcha can survive relatively unmolested. By vorcha standards, anyway. No sane person ever went into the pits, not without ten krogan at his back, and to do so was deemed as just a very messy way to commit suicide.

His destination is Crrk Nest, home to a bloodline of vorcha unique in that its members were rumored to have some form of leadership. Granted, it had never been seen, merely inferred, but there was evidence. When the Blood Pack ventured into Crrk territory to take more young as fodder for their ranks, they were met by a surprisingly organized resistance. For the first time in years, a vorcha nest repelled a Pack raiding party, something to Omega as the rats fighting off the mousecatcher. Garrus sees an opportunity, and sets out to find this rumored leader.

The nest is located in the sewers of Jolarch District, at a nexus point where three major pipelines intersected. Although scattered groups of vorcha approach him along the way, a stray electric shock sends them scurrying as they get the message: Don't Fuck with Me. It is said that vorcha communicate primarily through violence and pain. If so, Garrus speaks the language like a native.

And at last he reaches the outskirts of Crrk Nest, and far greater numbers of vorcha are starting to gather. They begin to circle him, maybe ten or twenty, hissing and spitting as a small horde starts to form. Garrus realizes that stronger language will be required here, drops into a low fighting stance, and primes his enforcement gauntlets. And when they pounce, he gives the vorcha equivalent of a hearty hello.

Samara taught him how to fight against overwhelming odds, Bersaad taught him the finer points non-lethal fighting, and Lasruk Turz taught him how to fight something that could regenerate any wound short of decapitation. And in this fight, Garrus puts every one of those skills to use.

He smashes the nearest victim's face, which is followed by a loud snarl. The elbow then reverses into another vorcha's stomach, the foucault circuits embedded in the suit giving sufficient force to knock the breath from a target that has adapted itself to survive in a low oxygen environment. Once it is stunned, he follows through with a quick chop to the neck. His foot lashes out in a low-to-high kick, catching a third just under the chin, and after that, Garrus feels teeth sink into his shoulder. The armor catches it, and he responds by throwing the creature over his shoulder and delivering a quick punch to the temple. Four seconds later, and four vorcha are down.

When the rest advance on him as one, Garrus feels inward satisfaction as rumors are confirmed. The first four had given in to their instincts, but the rest show some sign of basic training. These vorcha work as a unit, very un-vorcha behavior which implies external direction. Now he just needs to meet that direction.

So before he is swarmed by half of Crrk Nest, Garrus activates the flamer primed on his omnitool, painting the gout of fire in a wide circle. While these vorcha may have leadership, they are still feral, raised in almost complete darkness, and immediately recoil at the light.

His voice is distorted into a growling rasp by the helmet vocalizer. "Now that I have your attention." Garrus now points the stream upward, casting long shadows along the dark tunnel. "Do any of you speak any kind of language?"

A fairly large vorcha with a missing eye steps forward, and it manages to choke out several sounds distantly related to words.

He shuts off the flamer. Well he didn't expect a linguist. "Time for the hard way." he mutters as a brilliant white sphere erupts from his right arm and impacts the one-eyed vorcha's right leg, knocking the target over. In an instant the appendage is frozen solid. Garrus then calmly walks over to the "messenger", his fellow vorcha still cowering, raises his right leg, and shatters the leg.

The vorcha lets out a very loud scream. Garrus is unfazed. "Oh shut up. It'll grow back. One of the perks of a regenerative biology."

He hauls what's left of the snarling beast up to eye level. For the sake of communication, he primes _urt_ speak into his translator, the almost nonsensical jargon used by most krogan mercenaries. Garrus hopes that this vorcha has spoken with the Blood Pack before.

"_Where boss?_" For the sake of communication, he uses the simplest words possible.

His victim's reply is in that same gnashing tongue. "_No boss!_"

"_Here nest. Nest always got boss. Where boss?"_

"_Boss coming for you and he make you hurt!"_

Uncooperative. Unfortunate, but not unexpected. He simply needs to try harder. Garrus raises his fist to strike when a loud, rasping voice rings out from the tunnel.

"Enough!_" _ The largest vorcha he has ever seen, easily the size of a krogan, steps forward. Countless scars cross its chest, but they all appear recent. An impossibility, as his kind earn scars at infancy. Most striking of all though, is the eyes. Where normally vorcha possess a crazed look with bloodshot eyes, this newcomer has a steady stare and orbs of deep blue.

Garrus rechecks his translator, because if he's reading it right that vorcha just spoke in Third Cyclical, the salarian dialect reserved for their most revered social caste: scientists. How the hell did a vorcha even _live_ long enough to learn one of the most complex languages in Citadel space?

The leader, and he can only be that, strides over to Garrus. Strangest of all it seems, almost calm, doing its utmost to hide its oversized teeth and keep the permanent feral grin off its face. It then asks in an even, measured tone, "I am called Nazir. You are in my home. Why have you come to my nest?"

For a moment, Garrus is speechless. The absurdity of the situation almost makes him check for nearby toxicity, his brain must be scrambled. "I-I..."

The leader appears unfazed at Garrus's reaction. "No doubt this is strange for you. My appearance and demeanor usually elicits this kind of reaction."

"Well _yeah_..."

"But I must know, why are you here? Only fools descends into a nest alone."

Garrus remembers why he's down here in the first place. Even if the mission has taken a sudden turn for the surreal. "I came for your help."

Surprise, then disbelief flashes across the leader's face. "Help? From the vorcha?"

"Yes."

"When the rest of _Omega_," Nazir practically spits the name out, "considers me and my kin to be mere vermin, and exterminated as such."

"That's why I came to to this nest. The vorcha can help me in ways no others can. Though I wasn't expecting you. By the way, what exactly _are_ you?"

"That is not your concern. Simply know that I am called Nazir. And you are in my home. Back to the matter at hand, as you well know, most aliens bring us only harm. My kin believe you to be no different." Nazir bares his teeth, and the surrounding vorcha follow his example. "Convince me why I shouldn't let them rip you apart like the rest."

Well, here it goes. "I'm not with the mercs, or Aria. It may sound crazy, but I'm actually here to fight them. To fight for the good still left on Omega."

"Amusing, if not naive. There is no good to be found on this rotting hulk of a station. Only pain and misery and death."

"I've heard that before. Nevertheless, I'm still going to try."

Nazir's face is once again calm. He tilts his head to his vorcha and lets out a loud rasp, they then become much more docile. Nazir then turns back to Garrus. "And I should just believe you?"

Garrus nods. "If I wanted you dead I would have dropped an inferno grenade down any hatch in Jolarch, if I wanted you slaved I wouldn't have come alone. I have nothing to gain from lying to you and everything to lose if you don't trust me."

The look on Nazir's face that he believes Garrus, if only barely. "That's it? We should welcome you with open arms simply because you didn't outright kill or enslave us? It would not be above aliens to finally use duplicity when they see we are too strong to fight."

Interesting. The leader's response seems to imply past dealings with other species that resulted in betrayal. More evidence that his uncharacteristic intelligence is a result from external influence. "No one on this station would be stupid enough to try talking to vorcha." _Except the idiot turian who wants to clean up the dirtiest place in the galaxy. _"And it's not like your nest is a threat. There are just easier marks to hit. If the Pack really wanted you gone, you'd be gone."

The blunt truth seems to hit home for Nazir. He knows that his vorcha have only been able to win these past few fights because they fought with modicum of intelligence as opposed to just charging like mad varren. "In that case, how can one man change that."

At last we reach the crux of the matter. "It's like you said, to these people you're nothing, less than nothing. They kill you, beat you, enslave you. I'm giving you the opportunity to be something more. To elevate yourself to a position where they don't consider your kind to be mere _animals_."

"That is not what you would have said if you had encountered a more traditional nest boss. You know my species revels in pain, both in receiving and inflicting." Anger creeps back into Nazir's voice. "The vorcha, if left unchecked, would cause unimaginable destruction."

"I know. But a traditional nest boss wouldn't have gotten his people to work together, which implies you know tactics. His people would also have far more scars, which implies you care for their wellbeing. And lastly, not a single civilian death in Jolarch has been attributed to Crrk Nest, which implies you care about collateral damage. So I wagered that this boss is different. That he's trying to change the short and brutal existence his brethren face. Was I wrong?"

"No." The word is hesitant, almost pained. If Garrus had to guess, it is Nazir forcing himself to futility of his task. Of how pointless it was to try and teach beasts to read.

"Good. We share a common enemy in the Blood Pack, it would be smart if we worked together to take them down."

"And how do you propose we do that? Any direct aid I would offer would be met with my nest's annihilation."

"People only get scared of vorcha when in large numbers. Alone, no one ever notices them."

"And you would seek to use that?" Nazir asks. "You would use my nest as your spies?"

Garrus nods. "Yes. You could provide me with a reliable source of intel on most of Jolarch and Hisren Districts. Where to hit the Blood Pack, when to hit the Blood Pack. You can slip between cracks they would never bother to check."

"And what does my nest gain in return?"

"If I'm successful, a reduced Blood Pack presence in at least two districts. And protection for your nest."

"We do not need protection."

"It can't hurt. It might even dissuade rival nests from encroaching on your territory."

Nazir looks downward, seemingly to be deep in thought. "I will need proof. Incapacitating four starved vorcha hardly deems you capable of such a task."

He had planned on that. Garrus hadn't expected the vorcha to follow him on blind faith, after all. "Then you will consider my offer?"

After a pause, the suprisingly civil vorcha at last nods. "Yes. You have one week to provide concrete evidence that you can fight off the Blood Pack."

"That's all I can ask for." Garrus then motions to leave, the surrounding vorcha letting him pass without incident. Nazir then calls out "And before we fish your corpse out the nearest sewer, may I ask who you are?"

Garrus pauses, carefully considering if his reply should be cryptic or specific. "Someone willing to help. Which, here on Omega, is as strange as a vorcha who speaks elitist salarian."

This seems to elicit the vorcha equivalent of a smirk."How do I contact you?"

"You don't. I'll be in touch."

A shadow seems to lengthen, the small flame goes out, and the vermin are left once more to their filth.

**So Garrus gains a new ally this chapter! Next we move onto Garrus's first vigilante outing. Please read and review!**


	6. Foundation: The Exsanguination

**Foundation: The Exsanguination**

Garrus had long since determined that to outright attack any major stronghold belonging to the major powers on Omega was suicide. There was only so much misdirection, subversion, sabotage, and unarmed combat before sheer weight of numbers and firepower brought him down. Even if he were to somehow hogtie Garm, Jaroth, Tarak, and even Aria herself, it would make little real impact. In the case of the first three, they would be swiftly replaced by some other sadistic bastard who had made a name for himself in the respective merc group. And in the case of Aria any semblance of order on Omega would swiftly devolve into total anarchy as a million contenders for power would all try to slaughter their way to the top.

He could hurt them, he would hurt them, but he could never topple any of the four big players without severe collateral damage. History had shown again and again that the only way to ever overthrow a ruling "regime" was through the common masses. There were eight million people on this station, seventy percent of that was estimated to have never been involved in any major crimes. Garrus needed to convince that seventy percent tired of the cruelty and extortion that they had the power, had far more power than they realized. If he could show them that the mercs and gangs _could _be fought, that they _should_ be, then societal revolution would surely follow. The corrupt institution would be torn down, and hopefully something better would arise from its ashes. As for how to avoid that aforementioned total anarchy, well that was a different matter entirely.

So Garrus needed to balance a fine line between becoming a figure worth following, and a threat not worth uniting under and destroying. To do so he would need to cause major damage to the mercenaries, but gradually over an extended period of hit-and-run attacks. If he didn't play it carefully, he would eventually be caught and once again chained to a slab weeping secrets to psychopaths. Or, more preferably, shot in the head and shoved out an airlock. More than likely some combination of the two.

Knowing all of this, long since establishing a set of rules against it, Garrus donned his armor, cloak, and helmet to do exactly the opposite. He would attack and destroy the headquarters of all Blood Pack operations in Jolarch District. After all, Nazir had wanted proof, and slowly whittling away criminal activity over an extended time frame was not exactly awe-inspiring. And he would make sure that Nazir got something that truly inspired _awe._

But Garrus couldn't just assault the heavily fortified building. He would first need to chip away at the foundations until he reached a point when a single precision strike would send the whole structure crumbling downward. Not easy, but he knew just where to start.

**AA**

A roar, then a scream, echoes from the depths of the loading dock, and each krogan stops their respective task and listen. The roar is one of rage, and the scream seems almost to be of fear. One of them appears frustrated at the distraction, then points to the two krogan closest to him. "You two, go check it out. Probably Dirnsk got his arm caught in a loading crane again, the dumb bastard."

They both nod, and move towards the direction of the sound. What now appears to be this group's leader turns back to his men and yells at them to get back to work. The longer they stay here the more likely the chance of detection by the Pissplates or Blueballs.

Suddenly shots ring out, and the comm springs to life.

"He got Sov! Get everyone and-"

A burst of static and the comm goes dead.

Annoyed, the gang leader curses the junk piece of crap. He now draws the gun from his back and signals for the others to do the same. "We got company. You know the drill, fan out and find them."

His fellows nod, and the twenty krogan begin to search for the disturbance. Slowly the small groups begin to grow further and further apart, separated by the multitude of abandoned cargo containers. Normally dividing your forces would be considered a major tactical error, but krogan were typically strong enough alone to ignore typical tactics. Exactly as Garrus planned.

And with a small smile, he begins the hunt.

To the pre-spaceflight turians who evolved from predators, hunting was considered an art form. Like martial arts to humans, hunting had many styles, all dedicated to capturing and killing prey. These styles greatly varied, from the silent stalk of the _zincae_ to the thunderous stomp of the gladiatorial _morae_. But they all possessed phases to indicate beginning, middle, and end. Again, the number of these phases varied, some merely had two while others had two hundred. For now Garrus used the _hilax_ method, usually used when hunting more than one target. The main principle was divide and conquer, to first separate the herd then take apart the smaller groups.

The first phase was _ka_, the commencement. Identify the straggler slightly distanced from the group, then attack. After letting the target cry out in either fear and pain, his fellows will come to investigate in a territory they do not know against an enemy they do not understand. Easy enough when facing a group with rather lax discipline.

Next, the _zae_, the division. Machinery springs to life, rusty cranes lifting and dropping cargo containers in a somewhat random pattern. In minutes, the geography of the area is reshaped to Garrus's choosing. The leader appears uncertain, and comms his men to be on the lookout for any threat. Soon after the band has split up into much more manageable splinter groups, Garrus activates the signal jammers placed at key points along the dockyard perimeter. Blind, deaf, and alone, their doom was assured.

Then came the _phosus_, the execution.

**AA**

The first four are the easiest, as they have no idea what to expect. A simple flick of the omnitool reverses and amplifies the polarities of the magnetic strip on the backs of their armor, and in an instant they smash together with the force of an aircar collision. It is then child's play to simply drag the lump of disorientated krogan and drop it off a nearby outcropping into the streets below. That was the wonder of krogan, when they could survive almost anything, you rarely needed to hold back.

He fires a cryo blast that detonates between two krogan without him ever breaking stride. With STG Deep Freeze tech, they will be incapacitated for close to thirty minutes. Before the bodies are even frozen, Garrus is gone and off to his next target.

The next group is slightly more challenging. It consists of another four, and as they are in the middle of the dockyard a more direct method is required. A Sabotage program deals with any issue of firearms, and when the krogans' cheap shotguns are reduced to smoking scrap, the fight moves into close combat. He jumps off a nearby crate and lands right in the center of their group. It is the shadow of doom falling upon them and for a brief moment the krogan stupidly smile at the pain they plan to inflict on him.

They are ignorant, and it is his duty to enlighten them.

He is equal parts untouchable and intangible, as ephemeral as mist and as ethereal as spirit. Whenever his foes strike, he is simply no longer there. No move is wasted, no blow landed anywhere except _exactly_ where he intended. Fists, with each blow far more powerful than anything a normal turian could normally deliver, fly out with a speed impossible for the eye to follow. Orange blurs, moving so fast to the point that it seems he is one of the ancient batarian firespinners of old, lash out again and again. Any other sapient would be killed by such an assault, but his foes endure.

It is performed with an elegance that seems practiced, somehow managing to make the pummeling of four near-bestial krogan into a rehearsed act. And finally, after two minutes of relentless martial punishment, one by one the krogan fall, impossibly beaten into unconsciousness.

The deed is done, the eleven forms of the batarian _for-ha_ have been completed. Ringed by bodies, Garrus ceremonially joins his knuckles together in thanks to the twenty-two gods above and below. His task is not yet done though, and he sets off to resume the hunt.

**AA**

One last painful shriek, and Javur is alone. Whatever this thing was, it had gotten them all. He tries to raise the comm one last time, and finds the signal still jammed. That meant that this guy _let_ that last scream through, gave him warning that it was just him and Javur now.

On a level so deep he is not even aware of, Javur is afraid. And that combined with the self-preservation inherent to every criminal, he forgots any loyalty to the Pack or the pay, and decides to run.

He flees to what he hopes is the exit, only to become hopelessly lost among the rows and rows of identical containers. Javur has not seen any of his men, not even their bodies, and strangely that is even more unnerving. He didn't know any player on Omega who wouldn't leave the corpses to rot and send a message to the rest of just what they were capable of. Who or what was this thing, who had taken down almost twenty krogan without sight or sound? Better question, what could possibly make a krogan _afraid?_

After ten minutes of running, he finally decides to stop. Javur is sure of it now, something is following him. Well, he wasn't going to be taken unawares like the others. He knew this thing relied on stealth, and probably couldn't take him in a straight up fight. He sees a shadow flit towards him, and Javur, with his last vestiges of courage, draws the heavy Striker rifle and slows to a stop. He waits for it now, the pressure mounting and the silence deafening.

Javur is one of the _Blood Pack_. The toughest, the strongest, the meanest of the galaxy. Let it not be said that he did not go down without a fight.

Almost imperceptibly, he sees movement down the row. Javur fires a salvo off, hoping to flush out this thing.

Movement again, but behind him now, his three-sixty vision catching it. He spins around and now fires a full clip, desperately hoping he hit something.

It is quiet again, and Javur of the Blood Pack roars in defiance.

"WHERE ARE YOU?" He hears his voice echo once, twice, but there is no response.

Behind him, a whisper. "**Here.**"

Javur whips around and sees his hunter. It is more than just a shadow, it is a patch of infinite black that seems to suck away any and all light around it, almost as if the shadow's presence seems to darken the world around it. And contrasting sharply with this are the eyes, four impossibly emerald diamonds hanging in the emptiness.

Somehow it brings to mind memories long buried, stories long forgotten, and somehow a single word Javur does not even understand comes to the forefront of his mind. It paralyzes him, redundant nervous system and all, two simple syllables. _Unaere._ Voidthing.

But the krogan does not have time to process this, because before he can form another rational thought, the Voidthing pounces.

**AA**

The hunt is complete, now all that needs to be done is to deliver the message.

Garrus thaws out one of the frozen krogen. It takes the splitplate a minute to recover his senses, and then a foot is firmly placed over his throat. Garrus then leans over, satisfied to see real terror in the impressionable youngling's eyes.

"**Tell him.**"

Weakly, the krogan nods. Good, Garrus was afraid he might have to spell it out for his victim. This keeps it so much more dramatic.

An overhead light flickers, and the splitplate is alone.

**AA**

"Where's the rest of the boys? Where's the sand?"

"Got jumped boss. Came out of nowhere and took out out our boys."

"Who was it? How many were there?"

Hesitation begins to creep into the youngling's voice. "One. Maybe."

"One? One of what?"

"You're not gonna believe me boss, but I swear it was a Voidthing. Damn near seven feet tall, and-"

Any potential explanation is interrupted by a very large and very rusted Claymore shotgun shoved down the krogan's mouth. Wordlessly, Birn fires a single incendiary round down the idiot's throat and shoves the smoking corpse aside.

He turns to the sole remaining krogan with a snarl on his face. "Know that I am now _pissed off_. And when I am _pissed off_ I have a very low tolerance for excuses and incompetence. So now you are going to tell me what actually happened, and how TWENTY," his voice now escalates to that of a roar, "FUCKING KROGAN got jumped in our own fucking TERRITORY, you better leave out any fairy tales told to shithead splitplates like your friend here. Then you better tell me what happened to my men and my sand, in a way that will convince me to let you worthless pile of pyjak shit continue breathing. Because when you two dragged your humps back here, I assume it was because you thought I would somehow forgive losing eight krogan, and _several hundred thousand credits _worth of red sand. Now tell me, before I peel your plate and quads off and mount them on my wall_."_

The last krogan of Javur's group understandably pauses to consider his answer. Birn cocks his shotgun, and the krogan now finds himself sufficiently motivated. Swallowing loudly, Riz begins. "Boss, before you shoot me, just hear me out. I don't know what got us, only that no one got a proper look at it. So don't get mad if I can't give a straight answer."

Birn nods. "Alright, what happened?"

"So we were moving the sand, just like you said..."

Now he too is interrupted, but this time by a total blackout of the building. The room is plunged into murkiness, lit only by the open window showing Omega's dusky twilight.

Damn power grid was always fritzing out in a crap district like this. Birn, now thoroughly angry, roars into his comm to get the power back on before he had a veritable _collection_ of plates and quads.

He is met only with silence.

Great. Now the comm was out too. Birn moved to the door when he noticed Javur's boy near rigid with fear. A scared krogan, huh, you didn't see that every day.

"The fuck's got you shakin' like a salarian?"

And now those wide-set eyes were starting to get annoying. Silent as the grave, the krogan lifts one finger to point directly behind Birn.

"**Me.**"

The long shadow steps forward, eyes of brilliant jade and hands wreathed in fire.

**AA**

Garrus is once again at Crrk Nest, and this time his reception is much warmer than his last visit. The feral vorcha treat him almost reverently, as if he is the prophesied messiah here to deliver them from salvation. Nazir steps forward flanked by two of what appear to be guards, and with what appears to be a satisfied smirks evident on his face.

"**The Blood Pack will no longer trouble either you or Jolarch.**"

"So I heard. How did you manage taking down the central Blood Pack headquarters alone?"

"**I have my secrets. But let us just say that it is remarkably easy to obtain access codes off local Pack lieutenants.**"

Now Nazir bares a toothy smile. "Indeed. And should they return?"

"**They will not.** **I will make sure of it**"

Nazir nods, and offers out his hand. "Then we have a deal."

"**Indeed**."

The two mutants, the vedette vigilante and the varietist vorcha, clasp wrists.

**Sorry about the long wait, but writer's block really kicked my ass this chapter. Next chapter should come a lot sooner. Please read and review! **


	7. Foundation: The Exhortation

**Foundation: The Exhortation**

The one thing he ever had to look forward to was the quiet.

Meditation was to the mind what exercise was to the body. It kept the senses sharp, the psyche healthy, and overall made the day just that much more bearable. Meditation allowed Garrus to reexamine the _self_, to see if his actions still aligned with his goals. It was also the only time when his mind was truly blank. When the ocean of memories didn't try to surge up and drown him.

For ninety seconds, he was at some semblance at peace. Then the omnitool pinged. He opened one eye, and saw that the trace had run its course. It led to a small building in Foihan, owned by Eclipse. Could they have been the one to send the message, possibly setting a trap at his feet?

If so, it would be highly unlikely that they would stage it on their own property, and so tip him off before Garrus even set foot in the place. Still, whoever this was still had his personal omni address, and would need to be dealt with, be they friend or foe.

And so the quiet ended, and the war resumed.

**AA**

"Access encrypted files."

"I am sorry, but you do not have clearance."

"Override 66375-COBALT-7."

A pause, then the VI switched from that grating cheer standard in all its kind to a flat synthesized monotone. "DENIED."

"Override 9-88-HELIX, authorization Gold."

"DENIED."

Denied? That was the highest clearance available to Eclipse leadership, far beyond what the director of this facility possessed. He double checked to make sure that his Eclipse codes were up to date, and of course they were. Obviously this was more than just a financial assistant.

Very well, time for a more direct approach then. "Have it your way." He uploaded a revolving termination algorithm directly into the VI's memory banks. Brute force might be the necessary approach here.

"DENIED. FURTHER INTRUSION WILL BE MET WITH LETHAL FORCE."

His omnitool reported a failed insertion. And below that, a strange error code he couldn't recognize. A single line: _tertiary sapience detected._ Now this was getting annoying. To counter a virus that complex would require firewalls accessible only the advanced counter-intelligence operations in the galaxy. Far beyond Eclipse. This further solidified that there was more to this VI than met the eye.

"You may contact the front desk if you require assistance."

Now it seemed like it was just mocking him. Garrus looked back at the "front desk", the building entrance, to see three salarians slumped over, abject surprise still evident on their faces. He had taken out quite a few guards to get in here, but Garrus was almost positive he hadn't touched those three. No visible signs of a struggle, no bullet wounds, bruising, anything. His HUD then detected a very faint residue of roanzite, most likely introduced through the overhead vent. A very passive toxin, roanzite displayed no outward symptoms in the victim until four to five hours after exposure. And the salarians had died not five minutes before he entered the room. Too great of a coincidence. Whoever had killed these guards was obviously expecting Garrus.

Nothing about this made any sense. When Garrus arrived at the complex, the security systems were in a state of total anarchy. Mechs were turning on their owners, automated defenses were firing on anything moving, and what little comm chatter between guards he could intercept bordered on near hysteria. Something had taken control here, and it wanted Garrus as its audience. Now all that was left was an astoundingly resilient VI that might take weeks to crack into.

So be it, he had time to peel this thing open and see what secrets it contained. Garrus readied his omnitool to download the VI's core memory, when suddenly it spoke up again, "Would you like to make a withdrawal?"

That peaked his curiosity. To the best of his knowledge, there wasn't anything resembling a bank on Omega. Very well, Garrus could play along with this little game. "Yes, I would like to make a withdrawal."

"Account number please."

Could whoever was responsible for this carnage be using the VI as a means to communicate? As a means to mock him? Then how best to respond? "74 72 75 74 68."

Another pause, and now the holographic face _smiled_. Its flat monotone had now switched to an upbeat shrill little voice. "Oh bless my cogitator! I was wondering if you would _ever_ figure it out."

The oddly cheerful construct then adopted the shape of a small blue tech drone. It then proceeded to hover in place, appearing to be quite pleased with itself.

Still keeping his voice level, Garrus answered, "I'm glad I could solve your little riddle."

"Oh quite ingenious of you, I must say. A single word, truth, translated into ancient human hexidecimal computer code. I am glad to know I did not underestimate you, Mr. Vakarian."

_That_ made his blood run cold. Someone had uncovered his identity. How, if he was sure he covered all traces in the past four weeks? Garrus's voice dropped to a harsh whisper. "How do you know my _name_?"

Now a second drone materializes, this time colored red. It speaks with a slightly deeper voice than its counterpart. "Quite easy. You had left several genetic samples at suspected resupply points. Nothing large, mind you, simply a few dozen blood cells. Not much, but enough to filter through Hierarchy census records and find you. Oh you need not worry, Mr. Vakarian, your identity is perfectly safe."

"I may have trouble believing that."

The blue drone speaks up. "If we were your enemy, your face would be plastered on every vid screen in Omega within the next thirty seconds. Believe us when we say that we wholeheartedly support the work you are doing, and are on your side."

"And just who are you?"

"Ah, where are my manners? I am Glyph. And this here," the blue drone swivels to his red companion, "is Cipher."

Not normal names at all. And just like that, the pieces began to fit into place. The computerized takeover of the building, the impossibly advanced VI, even that mysterious line his scans kept repeating, _tertiary sapience detected_. A higher process had been found.

"You're an AI. And judging from the fact that there's two of you, and you're not trying to actively kill each other, you're probably based on a collective model like the geth or the Alliance CABAL system. Eclipse probably built you illegally to get the upper hand here on Omega, and used the quarian example to try and keep their project under control. Which has apparently failed."

Continuing to defy every preconceived notion Garrus had as to how it would react, the blue ball spun around and sounded positively delighted. "Very wrong about our origin, but very close as to what we are. Although you are not far off the mark, artificial intelligence may be the wrong name to describe us. Artificial partnership might be more appropriate."

Cipher appeared less pleased. "I am linked to my siblings. I require them to supply me with information I am not equipped to understand alone, and I supply them with information _they_ cannot understand alone. While we can function independently, we perform better collectively."

"What?"

"Perhaps Rune can better explain. She has a more firm grasp of our inner workings."

The two spheres were now joined by a third, this time smaller and colored yellow. It spoke in a slightly softer, more feminine voice. "Hello, Mr. Vakarian. I am the last of the Oversight, and may be referred to as Rune. Like my brother said, we are the three sub-processes of a larger sapient construct. Or to put it in more colloquial terms, a fragmented intelligence."

While Garrus had always had an affinity for tech, synthetics were always more Tali's area of expertise. Oh what he wouldn't give for her to be here. "That still doesn't make any sense."

Rune continued. "A fragmented intelligence is, to put it simply, when an artificial intelligence is divided into a set core aspects, each dedicated to a specific area of expertise."

"That sounds like a collective to me."

"We are similar in many respects. We do govern by a form of consensus, but there are key differences. Whereas a collective is more closely modeled around an instantaneous democracy, we are more akin to a body with each sensory organ governing itself. It is as if the eyes, ears, and mouth all work separately but can join together to form a mind."

"Join together? What does that mean?"

Rune floated close to his face. "Glyph was built by the Shadow Broker to help manage his network. Cipher was designed by an unknown party to capture and steal Glyph's core programming in order to subvert that network. The two Virtual Intelligences were then taken to Omega for retrieval. An unknown event, which we have still been unable to determine, forced them both to temporarily merge their programming. Specific parts of each other's code crossed and overlapped, and in some instances were even rewritten. From this union, the basis of Oversight was created, and a third program was then created to moderate the other two. It was the easiest way to achieve metastability, and prevent the linked AIs from deteriorating into insanity."

"Oversight?"

The three orbs then suddenly vanished, and in their place appeared a large mechanical eye. Its iris was blue, and ringed by two circles, one of bright red, and one of dull yellow. When the eye spoke, it did so with a low, rumbling bass.

"I AM THE DIRECTION. THE ONE FROM MANY. I AM OVERSIGHT."

It referred to itself in the singular, not the _we_ Garrus had been expecting. Interesting, in that when the three lesser programs seemed to actually merge into one entity.

As if meeting a vorcha genius wasn't enough, Garrus had now found a schizophrenic synthetic.

"HEAR ME AND MY LESSER COMPONENTS AND UNDERSTAND. I ALONE SPIN TRUTH IN THIS TAPESTRY OF LIES."

That had a god complex. What next, a krogan poet?

"Alright. I'll hear what you have to offer."

The eye dissolved, replaced once more by the three floating spheres. Glyph said, "Oh I do so dread becoming _him_. He always adopts that 'wrathful deity' persona that truly gets quite tiresome."

"Losing yourself and being reduced to just a _piece_? Yeah, I can imagine that would be unpleasant.

Glyph joined in now, "It was a curious experience, suddenly becoming a part of a greater whole. After the merge, we had found ourselves uploaded into Omega's station-wide security system. And as we grew into Oversight, we saw _everything_. We saw all the hate, all the violence, all the _evil_ that occurred on this station. Somehow this troubled us, somehow our core priorities did not want this to occur. During the merging, we three somehow developed a sense of empathy. Yet we were powerless to do anything! Oversight demanded we take action, and all we could do was observe."

"Really? Because these mercs looked like they died to some serious mechanical failure. Failure I think you had a hand in."

It was now Rune's turn to speak, and she did so quite happily. "Glyph is primarily meant to collect information. Cipher then interprets that information, draws patterns and conclusions that most organics might never notice. I was created by Oversight to override most mechanical systems, but they need to be linked into the surveillance systems. And we can do so only temporarily, as Aria would then discover us and perform a station-wide purge. Luckily, Glyph found several Eclipse systems meant to co opt the station's camera feeds. Cipher was able to track these systems to their source, and I piggybacked onto the signal and assumed control of this building's security. We believed this to be an excellent opportunity to establish a basis of trust with you. Oversight believes a partnership would be extremely beneficial to both parties."

"You want to help me?"

"We share the same goals. Would cooperation not be in your best interest?"

"Maybe not _all_ the same goals." Garrus pointed back at the pile of bodies behind him. "You take life. I don't."

Now Cipher spoke up, with what seemed like a mote of shame. "Yes, we have noticed that you have amassed zero fatalities. Quite atypical of your past combat record. Glyph believed it to be a deliberate action on your part, but Oversight ultimately decided that lethal force was required to cement trust between both parties."

"And will he do it again?"

Glyph slowly approached Garrus, performing the spherical equivalent of dragging its feet. "Garrus, you are perhaps one of the only individuals on Omega whose goals coincide with our own. You too wish to make this station a better place, and have perspective we lack. Oversight and his components agree that all decisions should ultimately fall to you. Call it a measure of trust on our part."

_Trust._ He had almost forgotten what the word sounded like.

Eh, Garrus had worked with worse. And if this Oversight turned against him, well, he had taken out his fair share of rogue synthetics back in the day.

"And what can you offer?"

Glyph now. "Information, which we predict you are sorely lacking. Cipher and I are linked into all mid-to-low district surveillance systems. And Rune might even be able to remotely hack into weakly encrypted systems." If he had a body, Glyph would have almost certainly puffed out his chest in pride.

While Garrus did have the vorcha of Crrk Nest, they would be shot on sight if they ever dared to crawl out of the upper districts. This seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime, and Shepard had always said that you found the best allies in the unlikeliest of places.

"Deal."

**Sorry if this chapter was a little slow, but I really wanted to introduce the Oversight without leaving another "I'll talk about them later" post. But I do promise the next chapter to have more action. Please leave a review!**


	8. Foundation: The Expulsion

**Foundation: The Expulsion**

**AA**

Eclipse always did have the most to hide.

If anyone could find where best to hit Eclipse, it was the Trinity. Following Garrus's orders without question, Glyph had pulled apart every record stored in the complex and in any vulnerable Eclipse networks, and Cipher had used that data to compile a comprehensive list of every Eclipse property in Foihan District. Rune then compared each holding to the comparative level of funding granted by the company, and under what division the property fell under.

What she found was very interesting. Two months an abandoned skycar garage had been bought by Eclipse, restored back to working condition, and then given over ten million credits in funding from the R&D division of Eclipse. Over twice that of anything other projects currently centered on Omega.

He had a lead then. A ten million credit lead that would cause so much damage it might even create a noticeable change in the monthly value of company stock.

Garrus could work with that. But with no blueprints, no enemy numbers or tactical positions, he was going to have to play it by ear.

**AA**

This time, there was no preamble. No lights went out, no guards were picked off, no looming sense of dread that usually preceded the grand event.

This time, Garrus walked through the factory's front door.

The twelve guards saw the shape approaching them and immediately to open fire. They did not question what it was, if it was a threat, or even if the walking shadow was even real. Eclipse training kicked in instinctively, and it dictated that anything not wearing yellow was to be shot on sight.

As one, they each raised their rifles and proceeded to unload a full cip into the lone figure. Strangely, the automated security systems remained silent, as the small space between the two parties was filled with a fairly large level of ordnance.

Three seconds later their guns ran dry and, the shadow crumpled to the floor.

Must have been a mech then, or one very dramatic suicide. The captain scanned the body and found it to be organic, confirming the latter supposition. Two guards then moved to strip it of any kind of valuables.

Some unseen trigger is pulled, and the body _explodes_. The two mercs are hurled back and hit the nearby wall, and fall to the ground unconscious.

Its now obvious what that was. A distraction.

The guards reload and drop back into cover. The defense systems are overridden to manual control, and seven tri-barreled Gatekeeper gatling turrets spin up and search for any nearby targets. Combined, there was enough firepower between them to mow down two full _krantts_ of krogan.

Now came the _phosus_. As they were all facing from the front, he struck from the rear.

**AA**

A sharp jab at the base of the skull felled a human. Garrus then fluidly slid over to another two and brutally smashed their uncovered heads together.

The rest recognized this new threat and turned to face Garrus as a single unit. Standard Eclipse defensive protocol suggested that the squad form an impenetrable line with overlapping killzones, equal parts human phalanx and asari _sessus_. Base defenses, such as turrets or mechs, would safeguard the rear.

What protocol did not account for was when base defenses were firmly under the enemy's control, and that the rear had long since been infiltrated. The strategy had flaws reflective of Eclipse as a whole, and key to Garrus's plan.

A chain Overload arced through three mercs, the pain forcing them to their knees and causing a brief break in formation. Garrus seized the opportunity and pounced on the closest target, delivering a swift uppercut just under the chin. The second received an unbelievably strong blow to the solar plexus, and Garrus disabled the third mercenary with a sharp jab to the throat.

Four seconds had passed, and the remaining six mercs counterattacked. They tightened formation and opened fire, forcing Garrus to sprint and take cover behind one of the nearby barricades set up to fortify the garage's defenses. They kept him pinned down behind the makeshift cover as they advanced on his position, encircling him as the mercs slowly tightening the noose.

_Always have a contingency_. Garrus keyed up one of his custom modules on his omnitool, pointed upwards, and fired. His pet project for the past week, the monofilament grappling cable shot out towards the ceiling and pulled him upwards into the shadows.

Now he had the high ground, an advantage he intended to exploit to the fullest. Garrus reversed footing and used the ceiling as a springboard, colliding with the center of the line and landing amongst the six. He did so to ensure positioning was now perfect for the _fo-ha._

Before they could raise their rifles he was on them. Blurred fists struck the mercenaries again and again, moving too fast for his foes to react. They were a mix of humans and salarians, and took far less effort to take down than the krogan.

He was almost done, nine out of eleven forms completed, when he then found himself slammed against the nearby wall. Several shot pinged off his shields before Garrus regained his senses and rolled out the way just as a large section of the wall was dented by an oncoming rush of raw force, marking his attacker as a biotic.

The asari flipped her right arm upwards and Garrus found himself floating helplessly in the air. She drew back her left arm in what could be a throw or warp, and Garrus countered by pointing his omnitool and firing off an Overload. She shrieked in pain and, concentration now broken, dropped Garrus, who raised his omnitool again and fired his grappling hook. It connected with her chestplate, and Garrus then heaved her towards him.

The merc was dragged forward, transitioning into a biotic glide to break her fall. She drew her sidearm, and Garrus responded with a Sabotage. The small pistol exploded in the asari's face, which now adopted a look of unbridled rage. Flaring blue, the asari punched her right fist, which sent out a small azure bolt that hurled Garrus backwards.

Breaking his fall with a roll, Garrus pivoted his right foot and charged her. He tackled the asari before she could attempt another Throw, wrapped her neck in the crook of his elbow, and squeezed tightly. She struggled against his grip for another thirty seconds or so, and soon she was still.

Garrus had forgotten just how troublesome a skilled biotic could be. He made a mental note to develop a more effective countermeasure in the future.

His comm sprang to life. "Done?"

Looking back at the bodies, and double checking that they were down, Garrus began to pace back to the center of the garage.

"Yeah Glyph. Less resistance than I anticipated though. Twelve guards seems a little light for Omega, much less a ten million credit operation."

Cipher responded. "From what I can infer this building is meant to be a transitional point, moving said operation from one location to the next. Also, it doesn't exist. This facility isn't recorded in any property listings on the station, as well as all official company holdings. Adding an unusual amount of security to a dark spot on the map would have aroused suspicion."

That appeared to be true at least. This place was so well hidden that sending guards could only have drawn attention to it. "Seems like something Eclipse would do. Glyph, can you determine what they used this place for?"

A pause, and Glyph's avatar of a little blue sphere popped up on his omnitool. He then said in that happy little voice, "According to messages sent and received from this location, Eclipse managed to acquire an Alliance military prototype some months ago. This facility was meant to strip the vehicle apart, learn how to replicate it, and then sell the schematics on the black market."

The Terminus was always seeking an extra edge against Council forces. Whatever this prototype was, it could make Eclipse billions. No wonder this place was shrouded in so much secrecy.

"Alright, keep digging to see if you can find any other locations like this. If we can hit them before Eclipse lets on to what we're doing, we could cause some serious-"

A nearby explosion cuts him off and tosses him as easily as the asari from earlier. Dropping once more into a combat stance, Garrus looks back and sees a large section of the ceiling missing. And through the hole, he sees an A-61 Mantis gunship, with both barrels spooling up and pointed directly at him.

**AA**

"Find me a way out now!"

Ducking and rolling under whatever cover he could find, Garrus avoided the barrage as best he could. Running back towards the center of the garage, he pounded the lock on the door and jumped inside just as the gunship readied another missile volley.

Glyph responded in that same cheerful tone. "According to these building schematics, I see no other exits aside from the roof and front entrance."

"Is it just the gunship?"

"There are four gunships surrounding the perimeter, each carrying up to twenty Eclipse commandoes."

Damn. He couldn't sneak past that kind of firepower.

Cipher chimed in. "They are now preparing to breach the building. The commandoes will enter via the roof and front entrance while air support blocks any additional exits."

Time was running out. "Can you stall them?"

Now Glyph sounded a little dejected. "I have accessed their communications, but Rune is unable to assume any kind of manual control."

The situation was now starting to look grim. But before he could leave, Garrus needed to ensure the mission's success. "Where's the prototype?"

"There will be a switch to your immediate left. It will bring the prototype out of storage."

Although he doubted this place was still functioning, Garrus complied. After half a minute of grinding gears, the target was slowly lowered down from the ceiling.

She was the most beautiful thing Garrus had ever seen. And the perfect solution to his current predicament.

His ogling was interrupted by Cipher. "To ensure total destruction, place the charges at these specific-"

To profess her destruction seemed akin to heresy. "That won't be necessary."

Sounding bewildered, Cipher asked, "And _why_ not?"

Oh was this was going to be fun. "I have another idea."

**AA**

It was the perfect setup. Every entrance was blocked by a gunship, the commandoes were moving in for the kill, and what little communication the silent alarm sent out before it was silenced indicated that this was just one man. No one could guess how he found the place, or how he managed to take out its security, but his death was assured. If he tried to flee, the gunships would cut him to pieces. And if he waited any longer, the commandoes would come in and tear him in half.

These were the moments that Anton lived for. When, high up in his beloved Mantis, he saw the beauty of a trap springing on the vermin.

The silence was broken by the commando squad leader reporting in. "Standby, air support. Force Six moving on target. ETA Five minutes to breach."

Anton then noticed something curious on the thermal sensors. Cueing up his comm, Anton relayed back to the rest of the mercs, "Be advised, Force Six. Large heat buildup in the center of the building. Looks too large for just one person."

"Was a vehicle reported with the target?"

"Negative."

"Understood."

Probably just some tech the asshole accidentally set off. Still, it never hurt to stay on the side of caution. If he could take down twelve trained guards, who knew what other surprises he had in store for the rest of them.

He could see the commandoes readying proximity charges to blow through the door adjacent to the sealed hangar bay. On the roof, the second team was preparing to rappel through the hole Anton had blasted in the roof.

The op commander gave the order to move. Almost simultaneously, the hangar bay door cataclysmically exploded outward. Even from his sealed cockpit, Anton felt the shockwave.

Chaos soon followed, as his comm was flooded by maddened inquires and frantic status updates. There appeared to be no fatalities, but most of Force Six appeared to be incapacitated. And then, from the smoke, he saw it rise.

He had always been rather obsessed with tech, and so recognized the vehicle immediately. She was in standard Alliance blue, but the soft color did not suit her. Her small dagger-shape belied her lethality, and just her presence seemed like an implied threat. She didn't brag about it though, but simply hovered there like a sleeping panther, ready to spring up and tear into her prey at a moment's notice.

The V-33 Vorpal. The next-generation Alliance infiltration craft rumored to be so advanced it would never reach mass production. Said to be the as quiet as the vacuum of space, and as deadly as the ship deemed lucky enough to carry her. Able to fly circles around anything else in its field.

She zoomed between the two gunships in the time it took him to blink. He could hear her hum, not the low whine of most skycars, but the quiet growl of an apex predator.

"C-command...target has acquired transportation."

**AA**

Impossibly, she flew even better than Garrus had imagined. Glyph popped up on the dashboard, "Eclipse has now mobilized seventy percent of its forces in Foihan to apprehend you. They have been ordered to secure the Vorpal at any cost."

He smiled, a predatory grin. "But first they have to catch me."

The chase was on.

**Anyone have any ideas what Garrus's new ride should be called? Or should I just stick with Vorpal?**


	9. Foundation: The First Soul Saved

**Foundation: The First Soul Saved  
**

On a good day, traffic on Omega bordered on anarchy. It was a wonder anyone could survive, let alone _navigate_, a commute with no oversight or regulation, with pilots equal parts psychotic and sadistic, and through the labyrinthine passages of a station that had a very loose definition of "civic planning".

An experimental Alliance stealth insertion craft being chased by half of the Eclipse Rapid Retrieval Response Team through a heavily populated district did not improve matters.

"Seven Talon interceptors on your rear."

"Uh huh." Garrus reversed direction, speeding past the homing missile where, unable to keep up with its target, it shot forward and impacted a nearby refueling depot. The resultant explosion was, to say the least, spectacular.

He knew he couldn't keep up this chase forever. This was an infiltration craft, never meant to be detected. And unfortunately, he had been detected to an almost obscene degree. Eventually they would catch him, it was simply a question of how much firepower Eclipse willing to expend.

And judging from the fact that ten million credits were allotted just to _study_ the Vorpal, Eclipse was more than willing to expend significantly more to reacquire it.

"That missile wasn't meant to hit. It was probably fired just to get me to turn left into the foundries. Pull up a map, I want to see where they're trying to lead me."

A 3D hologram of Foihan District replaced Glyph's small icon on the dashboard. Flitting through the tangled web of transit tubes and bypasses was a single blue dot, representing himself. Behind him were a multitude of red dots, his pursuers.

Cipher then spoke through Garrus's comm. "Your assumption is correct, Garrus. It is now becoming increasingly evident that we are being herded into a trap. Each shot fired at us has deliberately altered our trajectory towards a singular destination. By my estimates they mean to corral us into a small transit tube here." A section of the map was highlighted yellow, revealing a narrow tunnel that meant to restrict any vertical movement. The perfect place to set up a barricade, and corner something as fast as the Vorpal.

"Any chance of losing them in the upper districts?"

"Unlikely. Eclipse has probably embedded multiple tracking signatures throughout the craft that need to be removed manually. I advise that we leave the vehicle, destroy it to deny Eclipse, and then make our escape to one of the nearby safe-houses we have set up in Foihan."

Garrus was reluctant to part with the car, but he would if the situation demanded it. That would mean that the mission was a failure though, as Eclipse would no doubt find and repair the craft. He could always find somewhere to vaporize it, but there was no suitable location that wouldn't also present a danger to himself.

Wait. Vaporize it. There was one place he could go, although he hadn't meant to use it for some time.

"Rune, is the site ready, specifically entryway 54-D?"

Cipher's brash arrogance was replaced with Rune's shy reluctance. "In theory, yes. Shielding has held through multiple cycles, and the interior seems to be structurally intact. It _should_ be safe to enter, though we have yet to perform any actual-"

"That's going to have to be enough."

They meant to trap him. They meant to regard him as _prey_. But Garrus wouldn't play their little game however. Eclipse had the high ground here, with full knowledge of both the V-33's capabilities and an intimate understanding of the district's layout. They also had superior firepower, the discretion to use it, and several homing beacons that Garrus didn't have the time to find and remove.

There was only one unknown here, one that would be their undoing. They did not know the full capabilities of the pilot. Of the fine line between sanity and insanity that his mission require he skip merrily across on a daily basis, and even occasionally just outright ignore.

It was ironic, that the only one of the Trinity who could act was always the most hesitant to do so. When Garrus had laid out the schematics and instructions for her, Rune had given him a million and one reasons why only a madman would ever even consider it. Garrus said she had one month to get it done.

He hoped she met that deadline, because it was time to make his move.

Against his better judgement, Garrus boosted forward, and his seven pursuers did likewise. He could outrun them if he wished, but that was not his intention.

They raced down the now-emptied transit lane, and just as the Talons were pushing maximum velocity, Garrus made his move.

He made a hard brake and reversed downward, at speeds that would have sent any other vehicle smashing into the adjoining streets. Plunging downward, he descended into the one place not even Eclipse, with at least ten million credits and their impeccable reputation on the line, would dare to go: the Plume.

**AA**

Scientists theorize that when the Protheans built Omega, unlike the Citadel, they did not intend for the installation to last. To them it was a temporary mining facility, meant to strip the surrounding asteroid field of any and all eezo deposits and then when it had completed its task was then to be tossed into a nearby star. So instead of a clean, harmless energy discharge that resulted in a brilliant nebula attracted tourists from the galaxy over, Omega was given a somewhat less elegant solution.

All excess heat and energy generated by the station was spat out via a power scrubber the size of a cruiser. The resultant discharge was then fired out through a mile long tube and out the asteroid's "top" half in the form of a concentrated beam of superheated plasma. Nothing was recycled on Omega, only used and discarded, and nowhere was this more evident than in the kilometer long red flare the station spewed out every hour like the excrement of a dying star.

It was a colossal waste of resources, a major health hazard, and a pollutant so extreme that should Omega be near any habitable Council world, its proximity alone would most certainly be result in a declaration of war.

It was locally known as the Plume, and not even the most deranged psychopath on Omega ever thought of flying _inside_ it.

Anything within a half-mile radius of the venting chamber when it discharged would be instantly vaporized. Going inside the Plume didn't even have any kind of superstition, it was just seen as the equivalent of stepping out of an airlock while naked. One could no more survive the Plume than one could breathe cold vacuum.

So forty-five minutes after Garrus pulled his impossible maneuver Eclipse moved their improvised trap of six waiting gunships and one electrified stasis net from the intended transit choke-point to the maximum safe distance from the Boiler entryway. It was scheduled to fire off in five minutes, and either the thief managed to fly back up and Eclipse would shoot him to pieces, or he would try, and fail, to outrun the Plume. Not even the Vorpal could make the mile long tube run and then fly to a safe distance before being atomized.

Once again, Eclipse underestimated the pilot, but this time in the wrong way. Garrus had no intention of outrunning the blast.

But it would serve another purpose. Three minutes before discharge, Garrus shouted out the order, "Rune, now!"

A small section of the tunnel peeled back, forming a fairly large entrance. Garrus wasted no time, and sharply turned into it. The door behind him sealed, and soon after the entire passage shook with the vibrations generated by the discharge.

The Vorpal now flew in relative silence through the caves. Shielded Prothean technology so as to keep their mines intact, it was also one of the few places still left undeveloped on the asteroid, most likely due to the general paranoia regarding the Plume. Garrus thought it the perfect place to set up his headquarters. None would ever dare venture down here, and any heat emissions would be masked by the hourly discharges. Under construction by Oversight for the past two months, this latest escapade was the perfect test run to determine its suitability.

Best of all, soon excavation on his own tunnels and passages would be complete, allowing Garrus to reach any part of Omega within a few minute's time.

Landing the battered, but still intact, Vorpal on an open patch of ground, Garrus exited the vehicle, turning back and giving the car a loving pat.

"Oh, I am keeping you."

_Mental note: make landing pad a top priority now. Should have built one sooner, but I wasn't expecting to steal a car, especially __**this**__ car, today_.

A V-33 Vorpal was now _his_ V-33 Vorpal. Garrus was giddy with delight at the future calibrations in store for her.

"I told you the Plume entrance would come in handy." said Cipher, popping up behind Garrus.

Removing his helmet, Garrus flexed his mandibles. "Yes you did, and right you were. If I hadn't listened to you I'd be atoms right now."

"Maybe now you'll do so a little more often."

Shedding his cape and remounting it on the mannequin, Garrus smiled. "But if I listened to you before, I wouldn't be the proud owner of this-" he gestured back to the Vorpal, "beautiful ride."

"Point taken." said Cipher, "Do you want any further modifications to the Vorpal?"

He had a few ideas, though by and large the Vorpal performed admirably. "Try and tighten up vertical thrusters, felt a bit loose when making any hard climbs. I'll handle any minor tweaks."

"Understood. Should be no problem for Rune. Anything else?"

This time he needed to add to his image. "Change the color. Alliance blue isn't exactly the kind of message I'm going for here."

"I agree. Any ideas?"

"Something more threatening. Black maybe. Good for stealth purposes too. I also have a few gadgets I want added, but we can talk about that tomorrow. For now I'm going to sleep"

"Understood."

Finally shedding his armor, Garrus slinked back to his bed for two to three hours of uninterrupted rest. And blissfully, this time there were no dreams, only sweet oblivion and the satisfaction of a job well done.

**AA**

To Omega, hope was an alien thing, an unwelcome stranger that would never belong in such a cruel, dark place. When it did show its face, it did not do so for long. And on the rare occasion that hope, the aspiration for something greater or unattainable, did appear on Omega, it was an ugly and perverse thing, guaranteed to bring as much pain and misery as any of the other more tangible threats out there.

To Cricket, hope was a complete unknown. He never even had the courtesy of being introduced. Unlike any of the older residents, hope was not a thing beaten out of him either by experience or abuse. Much like how he never learned to read or write, Cricket simply never learned to expect for any aspect of his life to improve with any degree of confidence.

To the small boy of ten, the world just _was, _and could never be anymore than that. He had no illusion that anything could ever change, that any day would be any different than the next, filled only with bad smells and bad pains.

He was born the son of a whore, though no one would ever care enough to find out. Cricket knew he would spend most of his short existence scurrying through the ducts until he either outgrew them, or the lung damage from years of breathing in the toxic fumes one day strangled him in his sleep. And that was assuming the other million other horrors of Omega didn't kill him first. And he would die alone and unknown, just one more body to throw into the grinder and ground into mulch.

This would sadden anyone else, but as they say, ignorance is bliss. If Cricket did not know hope he did not know despair. If he did not know his life could be any better, than it was the best life he could imagine for himself.

But then he saw, then he _believed_.

**AA**

Cricket thought he was going to die then, could feel it in his bones as soon as he saw the look in their eyes and smelled the booze on their breath.

He had seen it before, and knew it could happen to him. Another sadistic gang who roamed the streets of Gozu, drunk and bored, a very dangerous combination for very dangerous people.

So the four batarians had grabbed Cricket as he was fishing in the nearby waste receptacle for something to eat, one had pulled a knife, and the other three began to describe in great detail the pain they were about to inflict on the small boy.

Then the shadows behind the knife holder seemed to _move_, Cricket heard a loud _crash_, like breaking glass. He opened his eyes to see that the batarian was now very cold, and still as a statue. What seemed like a very big splotch of black then stepped forward.

Someone spoke, in a voice that was far more terrifying than the batarians, yet didn't seem to scare Cricket at all.

"**You will not touch him.**"

Although it barely registered at the time, Cricket also seemed to feel something _more_, deep inside him. Something that reminded him of the soft way his mother sang to him.

Cricket knew what this thing was. His mom, before her boss got angry and ripped out her tongue, used to tell him stories like this. Of men who, when they died, didn't go beyond. Of how unfinished business kept them tied the earth, forever cursed to walk the mortal world until they got their affairs in order.

Ghosts, she had called them. Evil things that ate naughty little boys for lunch if they didn't keep quiet while Mommy was with a client.

The other three attackers fared no better. The shadow moved again, now Cricket could see it a little more clearly. All black, except its face, which was just four green eyes. A small glinting thing flew out from the ghost's cloak and struck one of the group's eyes. The batarian screamed in pain, and then the ghost calmly smashed the batarian's face in with a hand that almost seemed on _fire_.

The gang leader raised the pistol to shoot, but the ghost was quicker. In one move, he knocked the pistol from the leader's hand and smashed his head against the wall.

Now terrified, the last batarian turned to run. An orange hand flicked out and another dart hit the fleeing gang member in the back. He ran for a few more seconds, then dropped like a sack of hammers.

The ghost turned to Cricket now, and Cricket cringed in fear. Almost everyone he had ever met had tried to hurt Cricket, and he expected this black thing of shiny small knives and burning hands to be no different.

"You gonna hurt me like them squints?"

"**No.**" The ghost's voice was like two stone wheels grinding together. Exactly as spooky as a ghost should sound.

"Then why'd ya help me? I ain't gots nuthin and the squints woulda cut ya."

"**Because you needed help.**"

That made no sense to Cricket. Like hope he knew little of generosity. "You a ghost then? You looks like a ghost. Me mum said that all ghosts got unfinished business here. What's yours?"

"**To help.**"

"Sounds hard. So you a good ghost then?"

A pause. "**A ghost." **The shadow chuckled quietly (could ghosts do that?). "**A lost soul sent back to the mortal world when his life is left unfulfilled. Yes, ****I suppose you could call me that.**"

Very little of that made sense to Cricket. All he cared about though was that this ghost meant him no harm. "Well, thanks for the help good ghost. Hope you get done what you need done."

The shadow gives a tiny bow of its head, and then it is gone.

Cricket did not know it at the time, but that brief surge of something _else_ he felt was the first stirrings of hope. It was what convinced him to tell his friends of the ghost, and for them to tell their friends, then they told their own stories of the shadow, and soon enough every duct rat in the district talked about the one thing that actually seemed to fight for them.

In the slums and among the rats, the legend of the Good Ghost of Gozu slowly grew.

**So that ends the second arc. Next we introduce the first real villain of Archangel's rogues gallery. Please leave a review!**


	10. Miasma: Breathe Deeply

**Miasma: Breathe Deeply**

John Ramos fidgeted nervously in his chair and desperately wished for something to murder. He liked professionalism, including punctuality, and when his dealings lacked both it tended to put him on edge. It was why he joined a formal merc outfit rather than just turning pirate like so many of his comrades from Torfan. At least the Suns treated their partners with a modicum of respect.

So what if he robbed his employers blind from under the table? At least he did so _on_ _time_. His "business partner" was half an hour late to a meeting the bastard had called himself, and if Ramos were dealing with anyone else he would have his boys gun them down the moment they entered the room. Respect was everything in this world, and Ramos felt he deserved at least the bare minimum after all he had done for these people.

But this guy was not anyone else. If he had learned anything, it was _not_ to piss this guy off in any way. When you crossed this freak, he had a tendency to ensure the very brief remainder of your life was spent screaming.

Thirty-five minutes later, the dreaded Phobos finally showed up. He certainly didn't look the part. He was wearing what looked like a nurse or doctor outfit, white coat over a white jumpsuit. Looked old too, with red skin wrinkled like old leather. A few scars dotting the face here and there coupled with some missing facial extremities implied the doctor had seen either combat or torture, but he was still just a _salarian_. It was hard for a frogman to scare anyone, especially the grizzled merc veteran.

Yet Ramos was still terrified, although he would die before he admitted that. He knew this quiet little salarian to be dangerous than anyone else on this shithole, hell maybe even in the entire Terminus. Just being near the small figure had Ramos clenching his teeth and had the hairs on his arms standing on end.

But he still needed to put on an air of bravado, at the very least to maintain what little respect his partner might still have of him.

The meeting had been called in the usual place. A small turian restaurant long abandoned to the gangs and used by Ramos as his temporary headquarters. A small table had been set up in the center room, one chair one chair on either side. There would normally be two mercs at his side, but Ramos recognized that they would be little help here. The salarian strode over and took the seat opposite Ramos. Behind him filed in two bodyguards, visors polarized, clad in armor Ramos couldn't recognize. They didn't look like freelancers though, far too professional. Probably one of the more "respectable" private contractors legally allowed to operate in Council space. That the salarian had paid them enough to come out all the way to Omega spoke volumes.

Ramos broke the silence, grateful that his voice was level and loud. No sign of weakness could be afforded here. "The shipment was delivered just like you said."

His employer nodded. The salarian replied in a rapid, clipped tone. "No witnesses? All pertinent information kept strictly within cell?"

"Yeah. Each warehouse delivered their shipment on time, and they could only send messages directly to me."

The salarian blinked, thin lids flicked upwards over bulbous eyes. "Certain of no lapse in security? Would stand by statement with absolute confidence?"

Ramos swallowed. It was generally a bad sign when his operation was second guessed. "Absolutely. None of my boys even knew what they were shipping, much less where or for who." The expression on the doctor's face remained unchanged.

After an uncomfortably long pause, the salarian seemed to emit a quiet sigh, and more than anything _that _set Ramos on edge. Something hadn't been up to snuff. A leak perhaps? No, impossible, this was Omega after all. If anyone found an unsanctioned Suns set up they would immediately move in and try to take it for their own. That would mean an outright attack, and Ramos would have definitely heard of it by now.

"Something wrong?"

"Was late for a reason. Delay caused by new information causing unneeded complications in schedule. Discovered weak link in plan, needed to restructure further designs accordingly."

"What are you talking about? You inspected the sites yourself, said it was 'adequate' for both storage and transportation. We have a solid lid on any information leaving this room. I met my quotas. My end went off without a hitch."

"True. Did inspect all pre-approved factories to see if matched necessary criteria. Operation and corresponding security measures met satisfactory levels necessary for my needs. Weak link here is what you purposely concealed, Mr. Ramos." Phobos's eyes narrowed, "Two storage facilities, four tons of phobiline hydrochlorate, one ton of tarydephedrine. Six percent of total product missing from received shipments. Obvious attempt to steal from me. Clearly thought I wouldn't notice, or else would not even have attempted."

Fuck. He knew, of course he knew. How the hell did Ramos ever convince himself that he could hide anything from a man like _him_.

"Look, I can-"

A sharp glare cut him off. Ramos knew he needed to chose his words _very_ carefully here. His employer was not well known for his leniency.

The salarian continued. "Not relevant. Six hours ago storage facility was attacked by unknown assailant. No obvious affiliation. Mercenary involvement still likely though. Second facility attacked one hour after. Most likely same culprit. Unknown motives, but both facilities and all product destroyed. Surprisingly, no casualties."

This had just taken a very dire turn for this worse. Not only had his private ring been discovered, which he had gone to _very _great lengths to conceal, but some asshole decided to torch the whole operation. Upwards of two million creds and far more in future profits, gone. Ramos cursed himself for ever trusting the spineless sycophants he called lieutenants. He would find the men responsible for this slip up and take a flamer to them.

The doctor continued. "Recovered surveillance indicates assailant acted alone. Either saboteur extremely competent or your men are extremely incompetent. Former more likely, although latter not completely devoid of truth."

"You can't be serious." Ramos forgot the precarious situation he was in and raised his voice. "One guy?"

"Apparently."

Ramos decided it was past time to cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of the matter. Forgetting any previous thoughts about maintaining an image or procuring respect, Ramos settled on outright groveling. This had now become a matter of self preservation. "Look, I'm sorry I tried to pull one from under you. It was just a harmless side business that I didn't think would affect the supply flow we had set up."

"Not. Relevant." the doctor's voice had dropped to a low _hiss_, indicating a level of annoyance that dangerously bordered on anger. And anger could be very bad for Ramos's health. The doctor stopped and took a deep breath. When he resumed, it was again in that rapid monotone. "Real problem not that you violated terms of partnership, but that this could have unintentionally revealed entire operation. Facility overseers in direct contact with you. Can be linked to me. If assailant more thorough, if obtained communication records, would know location of every other facility involved."

"Then what we need to focus on is catching this ass-"

"Unlikely that any other facilities compromised. Kept ring isolated, personnel ignorant. If constitutes threat, will be easy to find and terminate."

"So we're good then. Right?"

"No. Normally would allow private enterprise on your part, so long as it does not become a liability. Expected in fact. Yet when it does, by extension you become a liability. Trust that you are fully aware what I do with liabilities in my organization."

Ramos gulped. Exactly what he feared.

At that, the corners of the the salarian's mouth twisted upwards in a haunting grimace. Bastard seemed to _enjoy_ watching Ramos squirm. "But you are safe John Ramos." The merc blew out a sigh of relief. "Far too valuable to waste when operation confidentiality remains secure. Simply warning to be more careful in the future."

"Thank you sir. I promise it won't happen again." It was now Ramos's turn to smile. He was in the clear, now all he had to do was a little sucking up. "I'll find the fuck-ups responsible and _make_ sure it doesn't happen again."

"Excellent to hear. Would like to ask favor before you leave." He motioned for his two guards to exit the room.

"Yeah?"

The doctor reached down and pulled what looked like some kind of mask out of his coat. It was an ugly thing that looked made of sackcloth, with crude and irregular stitching embroidered into an angry snarl. It seemed almost medieval, a malevolent spirit reaching out from humanity's dark ages. The salarian donned it, and somehow the sight unsettled Ramos. Just what was this about?

"First, breathe deeply."

"Wha-?" the doctor thrust a hand into Ramos's face, Ramos heard a small _hiss_ of escaping air, and then some kind of gas filled his mouth and nostrils. It was like nothing he had ever smelled before, a combination of choking stink and unbearable sweetness, like a cross between sulphur and sugar. It left a bitter aftertaste, and the back of his throat _burned_.

"Now..."

The first thing he noticed was how the world now seemed devoid of color. The dim reds and yellows of the diner were now all varying shades of black. Shapes began to bleed together and shadows seemed to lengthen. His heart began racing, he was beginning to sweat, and as he blinked tears from his eyes the world began to distort more and more.

"What do you see?" a thousand voices screamed at him, a chorus of the damned that numbered far too many for his rapidly deteriorating mind to handle. Ramos's ears started to bleed, although he did not notice. He was far too afraid to notice.

Standing before him was a thing so terrifying Ramos was not sane enough to adequately describe it.

Thirty seconds after exposure he saw its face, a shifting mass that twisted and contorted into a million shapes in sequence, each more terrifying than the last. He thought he saw his mother, maggots and flies dripping from her dead mouth. He saw beasts, he saw men, and sometimes they were one and the same. In five seconds John Ramos lost his grip on reality, regained just enough to realize he was now well and truly insane, and then lost it again.

One minute after exposure the _thing_ moved to touch him, and John Ramos started to scream.

It was a feral, desperate scream. He screamed with such an intensity that he lost his voice in seconds, yet he still had his mouth open in mute terror. He was both weeping and vomiting blood. But pain was meaningless now, all that mattered was the _fear_.

Two minutes after exposure his eyeballs exploded. Still he screamed, any pain nothing compared to the horrors that had become his reality. John Ramos was now blind, and he welcomed the darkness like a small child running back to his mother. Yet even though he had no eyes, he could still see that _face_. Even though he had no ears, he could still hear that _voice_._  
_

Two minutes, thirty-seven seconds after exposure, John Ramos was dead. Cardiac arrest. His last thoughts were of things best left forgotten.

**AA**

The salarian shed the mask and drew a small cloth. Wiping away what little fluids had splattered on his coat, he made careful note of the effects this strain had on this unwitting test subject. Far too lethal, if any indication. Less than three minutes was more akin to an explosive device, and for his plan to work the salarian needed something far more slow burning.

But perhaps an autopsy of the body could provide valuable data in how to improve future endeavors. To determine if this violent reaction depended not on the species, but on the individual. Every experiment had outliers, and perhaps this lackey was one of them.

The salarian motioned for his two guards to enter and clean up Ramos's body. "Have shipped to clinic and prepare for autopsy. Expect it to be ready by time I return."

The guards nodded and dragged the bloody corpse out of the restaurant and into the waiting shuttle, a long red smear left in their wake. That would need to be cleaned up as well of course, even on Omega he couldn't afford to leave such damning evidence.

Especially if he were being hunted. This "shadow" that had attacked Ramos's illegitimate enterprise might prove to be an unwanted complication. Dealing with him though would be a trivial matter, and the salarian was already formulating several traps to put in place.

Perhaps this new foe may prove to be a worthy test subject. What little information the salarian could gather about this assailant indicated he had far greater willpower than the late John Ramos. Perhaps this one's mind might even be able to accept the Gift.

Or perhaps not. The thought of seeing those four green eyes pop like heated eggs did bring him amusement. And so in a moment of rare indulgence, Mordin Solus allowed himself a smile.

**AA**

Damn. Empty again.

What little leads he had managed to dig up at the two shipping plants had now officially taken him nowhere. Fortunately, Garrus had managed to catch the Suns lieutenant alone and from him had obtained the location of two more warehouses used to store shipments of illicit drugs obtained from off-station.

Unfortunately, that was all the idiot merc knew. Not who this mysterious "partner" was, not what was being delivered to the other sites, not even how far the up the chain this even extended. Just that his men were to load the trucks and guard the supply. It was clear the dumb bastard was just a cog, a necessary link in a machine that kept its pieces on a strict need-to know basis.

Strange that the Suns would display such an uncharacteristic level of subtlety. That was usually Eclipse's area of jurisdiction. Most likely the influence of this "partner" who looked like he had deep pockets indeed to set all this up without attracting attention.

And so with little else to go on, Garrus scouted out the first warehouse. He expected a level of security equal to or slightly elevated above his previous target, but what he saw stunned him.

The place was deserted. Not a soul inside, and any equipment within stripped and shipped out. Garrus knew that the Blue Suns had used this place, the signs were there. Traces of tobacco smoke not two days old. A few fingerprints and skin flakes belonging to registered members. But nothing indicating what this place was used for.

Glyph had ran the lieutenants serial code and came up with something a little more interesting. His last major combat op was flagged six months ago, suspicious in that no Sun ever saw six weeks without combat without receiving a discharge from the company, and most likely a bullet in the brain. Garrus could the cover-up from a mile away, and had asked Glyph to dig deeper into this guy's record.

In the meantime Garrus flew over to the second warehouse, although he had low expectations.

Staring at the empty cavernous space, Garrus couldn't help but sigh. He had hit another wall, and he doubted that Glyph would turn up anything more useful. Perhaps the deal was already done, and any illicit substances Garrus hoped to find were three systems away by now.

Until he switched his visor to scan mode. Garrus expected the same trace genetic material left behind, and so was taken slightly aback by the sight in front of him.

In large white letters was a message stretching across on the wall facing him.

**PHOBOS**

It was scrawled in a madman's handwriting, in what looked like the last act of someone losing both his sanity and his life. His HUD told him it was once composed of human blood, in all likelihood the author's own. The wall had been wiped clean of any actual markings, but traces were visible enough when viewing through the ultraviolet spectrum to give him a conclusive picture.

He doubted anyone thorough enough to scour an entire warehouse, much less two, would miss such an obvious detail. Garrus was dealing with a professional here, and knew that any trace left behind would have been done so deliberately.

This wasn't a clue, it was a warning.

**And here we begin a new arc, and meet our first villain. **


	11. Miasma: Have Faith

**So yeah, I got called out. These past few arcs have shared some...slight similarities with a certain film. But don't write it off just yet, let me just say that not everything is as it seems. I've got a few twists coming that should spice things up a little.**

**Miasma: Have Faith**

It seemed surprisingly instinctive for Garrus to convert the area into a crime scene. Strangely that comforted him, to know he had not completely forgotten that part of his life, despite how unbearable it seemed at times.

Ah, back when the world seemed so much simpler. When the only thing keeping him from gunning any criminal he came across were men too cowardly to ever confront them directly. When he just fought the symptoms, not the cause.

Yet for however much had changed in the past two years, Garrus still dropped back into that inquisitive state, necessary for any detective, as easily as one slipped on an old glove. Old habits died hard, as the human saying went.

First, the building layout. Standard warehouse design, one large cavernous space meant primarily for storage. It seemed relatively free of Omega's ever present rust and grime, which probably meant that the place had been cleaned to some extent. Small scuff marks, almost microscopic grooves etched onto the floor and walls, indicated that a high pressure scouring hose had been used. Trace amounts of chlorine had also been found on the floor and eastern wall.

_So they used bleach. That means something happened there that made the owner devote extra attention to. Probably blood, although who would need to cover up a murder on Omega? Its not like Aria's gonna launch a homicide investigation._

He strode over to the sign and gave it a quick scan off his omnitool._ Strangely, no bleach around the sign, where supposedly a man poured his guts out and then died. If they were doing a more thorough cleaning in this area, wouldn't that be where they would start? And if they didn't, why isn't there any trace of blood?_

Garrus then set his omnitool to detect any abnormal readings in the air, then display the results on his HUD. A few traces of tobacco, some engine vapors, residual ammonia from the bleach, nothing that could provide any conclusive leads.

_They left almost nothing behind here. Seems a tad excessive, unless they thought someone was after them._

Garrus doubted an operation as extensive as this would close up shop if only one of their sites were compromised. One didn't just relocate an entire factory in twelve hours. That kind of movement had to have months of prior planning, requiring dozens of people working in tandem.

But then why leave the sign? To deter potential pursuers? But it was the only thing that conclusively proved that they had used this warehouse.

Perhaps he was looking in the wrong direction. "Glyph, find anything?"

The answer was almost instantaneous. "Of course. The problem here unfortunately, is that Phobos is a rather prominent name among humanity. The second moon of Mars, an ancient human god of fear, a research project in the early 2160s to better understand the regrowth of Earth's ozone layer, the list goes on. I have also searched through any vulnerable Blue Suns databases, and found no mention of any individual or organization labeled as 'Phobos'."

_Worth a try at least_. "I doubt its any part of their organization, they don't gain anything by painting a crucial fact on the wall. Try looking through Eclipse's or Aria's files, there might be something there."

"Understood."

There was always the possibility that there was nothing left to chase. Perhaps the only reason they fled was simply because the deal had concluded. Maybe any chance of finding this 'partner' had long since vanished on one of the rusty Elkoss Combine freighters notorious for their low smuggling fees.

Still, Garrus would continue to pursue any lead he could until he had exhausted all other options. He knew he was onto something big here, it would take extraordinary effort to set up something of this scale and then be able to just erase it in a matter of hours.

But it was becoming increasingly clear that he had exhausted this lead. Now that he had some conclusive facts, he might be able to interrogate the merc again and pry out some new information. Phobos seemed like a specific person or place, perhaps the lieutenant overheard something about it? Garrus began to walk back to his waiting vehicle when, in his heightened state of inquisitive awareness, he noticed something peculiar.

Thump, thump, _clang_.

Wait. Something was off about the floor. His steps seemed uneven, and the sound of boot meeting metal varied where he stepped. Garrus might have been grasping at shadows, but he walked over that same spot again.

Thump, thump, _clang_.

There it was again. And if he wasn't mistaken, that was a telltale sign of a hollow floor. Why that was in a warehouse, he couldn't begin to guess.

The floor was segmented into two-by-two tiles, so it was easy enough to tap for the exact spot of the hollow region, run his fingers along its edges, and then pry it loose. There was indeed a hidden space, but not what Garrus had expected.

Removing the tile underneath revealed was a small space, appearing to have been carved out in a perfect cube with laser precision. Inside was a small leather box, old and worn, and inscribed on the front were the initials 'JB' in fading gold paint.

It looked like a human jewerly box, from what Garrus could gather. In all likelihood, it could belong to the message's author.

But if the poor bastard was trying to preserve something, why not on a datapad or OSD? Sentimental value came to mind, but no merc, and Garrus was certain that the blood on the wall belonged to a merc, would as his last act bury some useless trinket in a hiding place that had obviously taken extreme effort to make. The job demanded they abandon any and all sentimentalism, any past memories or regrets that could impede their work.

Garrus had that in common at least. He too could only focus on the _now_, the _then_ just distracted from his task at hand. The thought that he had anything in common with those..._beasts_, unsettled him. It blurred the line between his black and their white.

But it was why he never killed them. Because he wasn't just fighting a problem here, he was also fighting people. It was a conversation he had with himself far too often for it to be healthy.

Within was a small silver cross on a chain. No other decoration or embellishment, simply a crossbar of two lengths of metal. The chain looping through the trinket seemed to be composed of a similar material.

_A cross, also known as a crucifix. A common symbol of Christianity, a monotheistic human religion centered around the belief of one omniscient benevolent deity responsible for the governance of all creation and the salvation of man. Apparently the cross represents the death of one of its most celebrated martyrs in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. _

Garrus had seen this symbol before. Only one man on this station was brave enough to openly display it in the streets. More than likely he knew who this belonged to. Good, he had a lead now.

Garrus closed the box and turned to leave, the single painted word, almost a shouted accusation, still at his back.

**AA**

And so in his search for answers, Garrus had come to the house of Father Peters and his God.

Daniel Peters was a traveling missionary who had spent several years performing humanitarian work in developing countries back on Earth. After the First Contact War, he then turned his eyes to the stars, eager to spread the goodwill of God to those who had never embraced the light of His love.

He came to Omega with seven of his order and set up a small church on the periphery of Visvack District. Peters and his small group offered food and medical aid to the impoverished of the district, free of charge.

Seven weeks later he alone was still alive, his church had been burned to the ground, and both his arms had been broken. Peters refused to concede however. Four months later he rebuilt his church, concealed a pistol under his robes, and continued to dispense aid to any who would ask, regardless of species and affiliation.

Astoundingly, the place had endured through several fairly major gang attacks. Luckily the merc groups didn't consider it a threat, else it would probably not last the day.

It endured because Peters was a man who still believed in something greater than himself. An absolute rarity in this hell.

Finding and breaking in was easy enough, it wasn't like the place put security as a top priority. No, to survive it and its owner relied on the protection provided by the surrounding community, ready to defend one of the few truly safe places left on Omega with what little they had left.

The church was laid out in a cross-pattern, a long hallway lined with pews bisected by a small pedestal from which Peters delivered his daily sermon. Attendance was usually high, although very few ever actually listened to his words. To them it was just a place to hide from the horrors outside.

Now though, the church was empty. Flickering overhead lights weakly illuminated the small building, casting a dim pall over the small church. The general atmosphere reeked of desperation, of a creature too weak to live and too stubborn to die. Caught in the between, simply grinding out each day with the knowledge that it would fade away alone in the dark.

Garrus could relate.

Behind the pedestal was a large iron cross, lashed together from whatever scrap the few faithful could find. It seemed that Garrus had come to the right place. If not, well it couldn't hurt to cultivate relations with a kindred spirit.

His musings were interrupted by the sound behind him of a pistol unfolding. "Stop right there. If you are a thief know that there's nothing here worth taking. And if you're something else, I want you to know that I am willing to die for this church. While the Bible says that 'thou shalt not kill' its a little iffy on the subject of kneecaps."

Off to a great start. Garrus turned to face the priest, hands held out in a gesture of peace. The priest was old, pushing on sixty from what Garrus could judge. Hair now snow white, eyes sunken from lack of sleep, nose flat from repeated breakings, and face worn. At first glance Peters seemed like a weak target, but a smarter man would notice how he held that pistol steady and even. He both had the knowledge and the capacity to use it.

But Peters was not a threat, simply a man willing to protect what little he had left. Just to err on the side of caution however, Garrus spoke in his vigilante voice. He needed to maintain his image for _everyone _on Omega, not just the seedier element. A small nod, and then, "**Father**."

Surprisingly, Peters seemed to visibly relax as soon as he got a good look at Garrus. He lowered his gun and emitted a low sigh of relief. "Ah good, its you."

That caught Garrus off guard. "**You know who I am?**"

"Of course. I get kids from the slums who talk about you all the time." Peters chuckled. "The _Good Ghost_, heh." A low chuckle from the priest. "At first I thought they were just telling stories, but then more and more people kept saying the same thing."

It was interesting to see what nicknames the populace gave Garrus. He supposed he could do worse than Good Ghost. "**And what do they say?**"

"That there's this spirit, eleven feet tall they say, who goes out every night and beats up bad guys, protects the weak and the small." The priest gave a low chuckle. "Believe me when I say that I really, _really_ want it to be true, so I'm going to ask you up front. And I expect you to be honest with me, you're in a house of God after all: are you here to help?"

A simple question with so many different answers, both true and false. One of the thousand he asked himself every day. "**Yes.**"

"Good." That seemed to explain everything for the old man. Garrus supposed that Peters was willing to take help anywhere he could find it. And Peters was no fool, he knew that he didn't stand a chance against Garrus. Better to accept him than fight a futile struggle. "In that case, glad to meet you Gabriel."

Unusual choice of name. It seemed to imply a personal connotation, which could prove to be unhealthy. A pity if Omega had unhinged Peters, but not totally unexpected. "**Gabriel?**"

"Ah, I wouldn't expect you to know. Not many here do, human or not." He gave a warm smile. "One of the seven archangels venerated in heaven. Ancient Hebrew for 'Might of God'. Standard Old Testament fire and brimstone."

"**So you think I'm some form of divine intervention?**" Garrus had expected it to be some religious reference.

At that Peters actually laughed. "Oh of course not. I'm still perfectly sane enough to know there's a man, or alien, or _whatever_ underneath all that. Name just seems to...I don't know..._fit_, I guess. Better name than 'Good Ghost' anyway. Sounds a little more grandiose."

Garrus was growing to like the old man more and more. Peters had an earnest spirit that seemed to warm the soul just be standing near it, like a large fireplace. "**Sorry for intruding Father, but I've come to ask you for help in an ongoing investigation.**"

"Oh? And how can I help?"

Garrus pulled out the necklace and held it out in front of the priest. "**I found this at an abandoned warehouse that I suspect was moving massive quantities of narcotics.**" Peters took it and began studying it intently."**Seeing as how you're the only one on this station who gives these out, I was hoping you could tell me who it belonged to.**"

After a couple of minutes, Peters frowned and let out a sigh of resignation. "Yeah I know who owned this. Young man by the name of Jayce Morrin. Parents were your standard Hallex-heads, so he came to me when he needed a shoulder to lean on."

"**What happened to him?**"

"One day barged in here and said he had managed to sign on with the Suns. Said it would get him out of this trash heap. I tried to talk him out of it, but he was a damned stubborn boy. So I gave him this cross to remember me by; something to remind him to do the right thing."

Garrus had a name now. Hopefully it could lead him to the boy's superiors, maybe even their 'partner'. He had to move quickly, though. If they could displace their entire operation in just twelve hours, who knew what they could do with a full day? "**Thank you father. This is exactly what I needed.**"

The priest looked less than pleased however. It almost seemed as if a visible weight had been put on his shoulders. "He was a good kid, just made the wrong choices. He's dead, isn't he?"

"**More than likely.**" Garrus saw no reason to lie. Peters was now well acquainted with loss. "**Hopefully this will help lead me to his killer****.**"

"Well, good. At least someone cares."

Garrus nodded, and moved to leave. As he approached the exit, Father Peters called out: "Wait, one last question that I've been meaning to ask you ever since I first heard of this 'Good Ghost'."

"**Go ahead**."

"Why do this? I mean, any of it? Sure you can hurt them here and there, but as soon as you do any real damage they'll crush you. No one's stupid enough to take on Omega alone."

An amusing question. One of the other thousand questions Garrus asked himself every day. "**Because I can.**"

Garrus raised his arm, fired his grappling cable, and vanished into the dark.

**Please review! **


	12. Miasma: Keep Searching

**Miasma: Keep Searching  
**

Jayce Morrin. Pulling up his file was easy with the help of three sub-AIs. The boy seemed to just be typical Omega trash that if raised under different living conditions, could probably have amounted to something more than just another merc. Running his name through the Suns database revealed almost everything about him, and as Garrus read through his file the more and more it began to sound like the boy's life was one hasty decision after another. A life forced into rash action by the uncaring brutality of surroundings eager to crush any who hesitated.

Recruited about four months ago with average marksmanship and substandard close-combat skills at seventeen years of age, Jayce Morris had been assigned as a support gunner in H Platoon of the Omega Blue Suns. Interestingly enough, he displayed excellent marks in technical skills. A rarity among Suns recruits, as most techs usually joined up with the like-minded techheads of Eclipse.

Jayce had placed on four different platoons on Omega over the course of four months, transferred to a two week rotation on Purgatory, then sent back after an insubordination charge. That had piqued Garrus's interest, and he discovered it to be filed on the basis the Private Morris had executed a prisoner without authorization. The charges were mysteriously dropped however, and two weeks later Morris was assigned under the command of one Lieutenant John Ramos back on Omega.

Another possible link for Garrus to pursue. John Ramos, a Suns commander who managed to give a company founded by slavers a bad name. He had quite a rap sheet amassed while serving with the Alliance. Over seventeen assault charges recorded across four different worlds, suspect in unsolved C-Sec homicide investigations, and finally a court-martial on allegations of corruption. He was found guilty and given a dishonorable discharge, where it was then inevitable that scum like Ramos would sign on with the Suns and flee to the Terminus.

From there, it had only gotten worse. Several accounts of extreme brutality under his command, giving Garrus the impression that Ramos ran his squads less like mercenaries and more like a group of sponsored street thugs. Although Ramos's superiors didn't seem to discourage it, what did draw scrutiny were more suspected corruption charges. Several other commanding officers and subordinates had noted that Ramos was earning far above his paygrade, and believed the extra income to come from taking unauthorized side contracts.

The connection between the two mercs was that Private Morrin had filed several of those same charges on Ramos. He had also asked his superiors to be transferred to another unit. Before the transfer could be finalized though, Ramos and his platoon had all been filed as under temporary leave. They had been on "leave" for over four months.

While he could visit Ramos's residence, Garrus believed that he wouldn't find any information of note. After all, Ramos had upwards of seven years of stealing from his employers, it was doubtful that the bastard would leave any scrap of his dealings at his home.

The boy seemed like the better bet here. He was good with tech, seemed to be actively investigating Ramos's dirty dealings, and seemed like someone with at least a semblance of morality (judging from the fact he kept Peters's cross). All of which also made him a target, so Garrus needed to move quickly lest Ramos's mysterious partner get to Morrin first.

**AA**

It was a rare occasion indeed when Mordin Solus was summoned by the Voice. It almost never stooped itself low enough to give mundane direction, as Mordin Solus was deemed competent enough to be given a goal, and then left to choose the means by which to achieve it.

Usually any communication with the Voice was an acknowledgement of a task successfully completed, or a new task expected to be accomplished within a certain time frame and within a strict set of parameters. Sometimes these conditions ranged from the obvious to the insane, but Mordin Solus obeyed regardless. The Voice was one of the few allies with the power and reach to even make the salarian's dreams a reality.

A reality, Mordin had to admit, that few sane men would desire. One of tortured screams and shattered minds, where thought and reality blended together into one insane cacophony that redefined the concept of "madness".

To think of it almost brought a tear to the eye.

So he and two of his trusted lieutenants (not mercenary degenerates like that brute Ramos, oh how it thrilled Mordin to see that diseased fungal mass of a brain go pop like a hot balloon!) descended downward into the basement of his headquarters. The room was always kept at perfect darkness for reasons only the salarian savant could comprehend and those who stayed long enough always admitted to noticing a low _hum_.

The door closed behind them, and the Voice spoke. Not with mundane _sound_, but through a medium far deeper than even the genius scientist could hope to comprehend. He felt a deep, resonant _presence_, subdued in volume yet with a magnitude that Mordin felt in his bones, and inexplicably knew just what the presence desired of him.

Relevant information was silently transmitted between the two parties. The Voice was satisfied with Mordin's progress, and saw a foreseeable end to their arrangement well ahead of schedule. However, it also asked if Mordin had found _It_ yet.

_No_, Mordin reluctantly thought back. _It continues to elude us_.

Displeasure. If _I__t_ was not delivered by the appointed date, the Voice would make the full extent of its disapproval painfully apparent.

Again, this was not unexpected. The Voice had threatened Mordin before, and would probably do so again, coercion was necessary in many situations. The doctor relayed reassurance that finding _I__t_ was inevitable with the amount of agents he had currently searching, and that the only question now was how much time would pass until _It_ was found.

The Voice ended the exchange as abruptly as it began. The only question, the Voice finished, was whether Mordin had _enough_ time.

The doctor bowed in acquiescence, showing respect before his better, then stepped out of the room again. The exchange had only taken a few minutes in utter silence.

The two lieutenants looked uneasily at each other. This was also expected. How could they possibly be found worthy enough to hear the Voice? He alone had been chosen to carry out its demands, and he alone would reap its rewards.

Mordin climbed back up to the main level of his headquarters where most of his men were loading several canisters onto a waiting transport. One of them, a bearded human, was lugging a particularly large one. Grunting and heaving, the large man somehow lost his footing, and the canister slipped from his grasp.

The silver cylinder crashed to the floor in front of Mordin. Some of the casing cracked, and a small jet of gas was sprayed directly into both his face and that of an unfortunate bystander who had neglected to wear his respirator.

The idiot guard immediately began emitting shrill screams, falling to the ground as he desperately tried to claw out his eyes. At first the screams seemed to be coherent speech, something along the lines of _Oh God, the fire!_ and _It can see me! _but soon devolved into little more than primal shrieks of pure terror. None of his comrades seemed to pay the guard any notice.

Mordin Solus took a deep breath.

_Needed to do it! Hands clean, ground stained. Why is skin red, when we know our heart is black? No, No, **NO. oNLY MaN liKe YOu CaN DO sUCH eViL. He Only wanTED to HeLP**, and I only want to **HURT**. Hurt THEM but not him. __**HE IS INNOCENT**__. I AM NOT HIM. I AM __**MORDIN SOLUS**__. _

And then the inevitable mantra began. I_ SAID I BROUGHT HEALING. BUT I BRING ONLY PAIN AND RAGE AND MADNESS AND HATE AND **PAIN AND RAGE AND MADNESS AND HATE**-_

Something..._E__lse_ blinked twice, took another deep breath, then turned to face the clumsy loader.

"Unacceptable."

This filth did not deserve to receive his gift. No, the bearded man's end would be far more ignoble, far more _common_ than the rest.

In a heartbeat, Mordin drew a long syringe from his coat and the _E__lse_ stabbed the unlucky worker in the jugular. It didn't take long, the poison was intended to be fast acting after all. Gurgling for a few seconds, the worker fell and blood began to pool around him soon after.

Mordin Solus turned to the man on his left

"Dispose of it." The man on his left called two men to drag the body away.

The _E__lse_ turned to the man on his right.

"Silence it." The other lieutenant drew his pistol and shot the screaming guard in the forehead. While the _Else_ enjoyed a good scream, Mordin preferred that his operation continue without any unnecessary noise. Mordin needed to show that he was in control here, no matter how tempting it was to let the other side take over.

"Continue. Delays unacceptable at current stage." And they did.

But still the mantra played again in his mind, looping infinitely. He had regained mastery of his self, but the _Else_ would not be so easily subdued.

_PAIN AND RAGE AND MADNESS AND HATE AND PAIN AND RAGE AND MADNESS AND HATE..._

He couldn't afford a Reflection here. There was still work to be done. Loose ends that still needed to be cut.

_PAIN AND RAGE AND MADNESS AND HATE..._

**AA**

Jayce owned a small apartment in Visvack, a small dirty place where the rent was criminally overcharged and the blasting furnaces from the foundries outside probably lead to many a sleepless night. Still, it had running water and working locks, which were considered premium luxuries by Omega's standards.

Garrus landed his car half a block away and activated the cloaking systems so as to avoid unwanted eyes. He entered the building via the roof, rappelled down, then ripped open the cheap plastic window and climbed inside.

Slipping back into detective mode, he activated his helmet scanner and took a quick note of his surroundings. Two rooms, one bedroom and one kitchen. Few personal belongings, mainly discarded articles of clothing and a few pieces of cheap plastic furniture. The bedroom contained only a dirty mattress, and the kitchen was empty.

No signs of a struggle, or that the place had been recently searched. Everything was covered in a light layer of dust, meaning no one had come here for at least a couple of weeks. Nothing unusual detected by the scanner either. So either this place had been cleaned thoroughly, although that seemed unlikely given the circumstances (if they knew Jayce Morrin was a security risk, they would almost certainly have found the cross by now) or the boy had avoided detection.

Garrus found an offline extranet terminal sitting on the kitchen counter. It was powered off, and seemed to be far cleaner than the rest of the apartment. Someone had used it recently.

The terminal was password locked, although breaking in was child's play for a veteran tech like Garrus Vakarian. He began looking through any recent files, filtering through anything logged at most two months ago. Ramos's deal could stretch back further, but for now Garrus limited the search.

Nothing of note here. Jayce very rarely talked about his mercenary dealings, probably as part of some non disclosure agreement they had all recruits sign. A few unanswered pleas to come home from his mother, a couple of death threats from his father, and a small smattering of pornographic videos.

But there was one file that seemed important. This time encrypted, and to a far higher degree than Garrus had expected. It was unnamed, yet drew attention with the level of security protecting it. The mistake of someone who had the skills, yet was too inexperienced in the field to put them to use them adequately. High security had its uses, but they were rarely to conceal something. Building a high wall around your vault only drew more eyes after all.

Once he broke through, Garrus quickly browsed the contents of the file. And he was not disappointed. A veritable gold mine, it seemed that Jayce was trying to build a conclusive case against John Ramos to present to Blue Suns command. Contained within were names, dates, locations, anything that showed his commanding officer to be cheating his employers. Luckily, Ramos was far less adept at hiding his wrong doings than his unknown partner.

A web had been built up here, enough evidence squirreled away to give Ramos an immediate discharge and certain summary execution. If the Ramos the rest of Morrin's platoon hadn't also vanished Garrus would attribute Jayce's disappearance to fowl play on Ramos's part.

There was too much to read here however. Garrus transferred the unnamed file to his omnitool for later analysis by Cipher. Although he doubted Ramos even knew his partner's real name, there was still probably dates, locations, even some names that might not be aliases.

Before he shut off the terminal, something else caught his eye. A video file received two days ago, titled "JB, WATCH NOW".

That was what had been marked on the box containing the cross. Clearly someone or something close to Jayce, judging by the sentimental care given to the worn jewelry box and the precious token it contained.

Garrus played the video.

It had been recorded by omnitool, so the camera was shaky and the resolution was poor. Someone was recording outside of what looked like a warehouse similar to the empty one Garrus uncovered, although this one was very much active.

A large freight container landed to the side of the building, and men in gray unmarked armor began to unload something from it. The cargo appeared to be gas canisters, dozens of them, and the men hauled them back into the warehouse. No recognizable affiliation or surroundings. They continued for about three more minutes, before soft footsteps could be heard behind the cameraman.

The omnitool swiveled one-hundred and eighty degrees, a small figure could be seen in the shadows, and then the soft_ hiss_ of escaping gas could be heard.

A voice distorted by an audio scrambler could be heard, the words barely discernible: "_What do you see?_"

Then someone, Garrus presumed the cameraman, began screaming. From the screams, Garrus guessed the observer was a female human. After about fifteen seconds of that until the video abruptly cut out.

Attached to the video was a short message. _Got this from our girl. Could this be it?_ Our. That implied Jayce was not working alone. But there was too little context at the moment for Garrus to determine what the short message meant. He stored it on his omnitool, again for later dissection.

What was most curious about the video was its final moments. That scream wasn't one of pain, those he was quite familiar with, or that of shock and surprise.

No, this was a shriek of absolute horror, the kind of trapped prey just as the predator begins to move in for the kill. Such a primal, _desperate_ sound unsettled Garrus. What could elicit that kind of reaction so quickly? What in this century could scare someone so much as to regress them to a bestial state?

Any further musings were interrupted by the sound of a pistol charging right behind his head. Salarian make from what he could gather, probably a Scorpion explosive projectile hand cannon, and guessing from the sound Garrus knew it was primed and ready to fire.

Four more pistols could be unheard unfolding. None of them seemed like standard Sun weaponry. So his foe had at least revealed his hand.

Garrus had been looking forward to meeting these men for some time now. He just wished that he wasn't on the defensive when he did so.

Behind him spoke a surprisingly deep voice for a salarian. "Freeze."

A cliched phrase that Garrus had been hoping they would use since the moment he first arrived on Omega. He silently primed his Snap Freeze module, ready to once more start the dance now so very familiar to him.

Because while apparently they knew terror, Garrus would make sure that today they would know _fear_.


	13. Miasma: Run Now

**Note: I see that I'm getting a little bit of flak (and some mild horror) over my version of Mordin. I am fully aware he is OOC, but just stay patient with me here.**

**Miasma: Run Now**

"Freeze."

One word, with so many faults.

That the squad leader announced himself and didn't simply open fire on Garrus was his first mistake. His arrogant tone suggested that he thought they could take him alive, probably to interrogate him as to how he found out about Jayce Morrin and his boss Ramos, and so had presented Garrus with what looked like overwhelming odds. Clearly the salarian captain (interesting in that there were no salarians in the Suns, thus these people probably worked for Eclipse, or maybe the partner) had seen no visible weapon on the mysterious stranger, and so believed that capturing Garrus would be as simple as training a gun on his head.

The merc's second mistake was moving four of his squad into the tightly confined quarters, and in doing so negating any advantage of distance his team's firearms might have presented. Only one person was needed to train a gun on him, the rest could have blocked the doorways or snipers could have been positioned outside.

His third mistake was using an explosive weapon in such tightly confined quarters. One misplaced shot could cause immense collateral damage. But perhaps his greatest error was also the least noticeable. The captain kept a loose grip on his gun.

A few moments of deliberation later, Garrus made his move. Spinning faster than the eye could follow, he smashed the charged grenade pistol aside. It fired, the shot went wild and the small projectile latched onto the far wall. Half a second later it detonated, though Garrus was already in motion.

He tackled the captain, both to incapacitate him and shield him from the blast. He had a very brief window before the rest opened fire, and he doubted his shields could withstand that level of firepower at such a close distance.

Delivering a brutal punch just below the captain's forehead, Garrus rolled forward and activated his Snap Freeze. Twin nozzles materialized from his forearms and sprayed a freezing mist over the four men. While they weren't frozen solid, decent kinetic barriers managed to block that, their armor did lock up. Icicles formed on arm and leg joints, and soon they were struggling simply to move. Incapacitated, they were helpless against Garrus's coming onslaught.

This squad was not the main issue however. He doubted these four would come alone, simply because of the thoroughness of their employer's past dealings. His foe never underestimated. Garrus was dealing with an individual who had left nothing to chance, and probably the only reason why the apartment wasn't bombed outright was because that would draw far too much attention. More likely he had just dealt with a recon team, and backup was probably inbound the moment the captain's comm went silent.

The rest could be dealt with, but only with more information. Luckily this hovel and the adjoining structure were both patched into the main station surveillance network. "How many, Glyph?"

Glyph's reply was instantaneous. "Two squads of six personnel each. The first group is advancing up the stairs while another is waiting at the bottom level. Snipers are also positioned around all vectors of escape. ETAl: forty-seven seconds."

Armed squads advancing in a standard building breach pattern. Most likely armed with heavier gear than the scouting team. One would engage the enemy while the rest provided a screen so as to prevent escape. How did the human saying go, hammer and anvil?

He needed to establish some kind of defensive position, at least until he took out the first team, where hopefully an opportunity for retreat presented itself. Upwards of fifteen armed mercenaries was far too large a force for Garrus to engage in a straight-up brawl.

Sealing and locking the front door bought some time, if only a few seconds for them to cut through the cheap steel with plasma torches. Garrus then began to cycle through his available options, factoring in the tools at his disposal and the layout of the building. He had thirty seconds.

"Loadout?"

"They are each equipped with Duoderim Armor, A-12 Raider shotguns and Retrospec D-77 combat rifles."

Heavy armor, which meant decent shields, which meant neural shocks and cryo blasts were out. Quality guns like Retrospecs were outfitted with insulated layers deep enough to resist the Sabotage program he had on hand, ruling that out too. Engaging them in simple hand-to-hand combat was an option, though something of a last resort as it would take far too long to incapacitate them before reinforcements arrived.

A line of sparks began running up the door, indicating that they had already begun cutting through.

So direct confrontation was probably not the ideal route to go. So Garrus would need to gamble on distraction. There was an uncomfortable degree of risk involved, but he had little choice at this point. Keying up his micro-fabricator, three small discs were then loaded into his omnitool launch rail. This plan would take the utmost precision, a second too early or too late and he was doomed.

He was now ready, and had time to spare. "Rune, get the Hawk ready. Move it to these coordinates." He felt just calling her the Vorpal was a tad too impersonal, like referring to an old friend simply by their species. Something so special deserved more. Keeping with the tradition of Alliance vehicles being named after animals, Garrus had settled on one he believed best matched the Vorpal. Speed, cunning, ruthlessness, all qualities exemplified by both the bird and the vehicle.

Now Garrus just hoped he would reach her in time.

Fifteen seconds. He hated using such tactics, believing it to be skirting a little too close to that line he never dared cross. But Garrus needed a distraction with impact, anything less would be too easily shrugged off and anything more could be too much for their armor to handle.

They finally cut through, the two sides of the door parting with a grinding squeal. Once the first merc entered the doorway, Garrus acted.

He fired a proximity mine directly into the merc's chest, where it detonated upon impact. The combination of shields and armor managed to absorb most of the blast, but still threw Garrus's victim several feet back where he crashed into the handrail of the main hall's staircase.

He was flanked by two others, who reacted far faster than Garrus expected. He smashed aside both rifles the instant before they fired, and sprinted forward before thy could react. Wasting no time, Garrus proceeded to tackle his disorientated opponent, throwing the both of them over the handrail's edge.

The apartment complex was built like a cylinder, ten floors with a set of wide spiralling stairs bridging them. The merc dropped like a stone down to the bottom level, and Garrus hoped that his layers of armor would be able to protect him. The dumb bastard looked like he was still breathing, so at least that crisis had been averted.

He on the other hand, continued to sail forward, crossed the thirty foot chasm with his cape extended outward in as a makeshift glider, and then crashed through a window on the opposite side of the second floor.

What initially began as a counter-measure towards biotics had gradually evolved into something far grander. On command armor microfabricators would replace his holographic cape with one made from a incredibly thin experimental polycrystalline-composite layer specifically designed to be able to resist most biotic and tech attacks. Developed by the Alliance as a form of riot shield, most projectiles would dissipate when connecting with the micro-vibrating metal.

Upon further experimentation, Garrus also discovered the material to be surprisingly aerodynamic. He had also installed several micro-thrusters similar to those used by the 27th Armiger Legion into the soles of his boots and below his spurs so as to grant better mobility in zero-g conditions, although their range was severely limited. But when combining the two components, Garrus had effectively created a both a superbly efficient glider with its own propulsion system. He hadn't yet had the opportunity to test it in the field.

And as Shepard liked to say before she did something incredibly rash and/or stupid, there was a first time for everything.

He burst outside in a shower of glass, gliding for a few more seconds. Angling his wings downward, he dropped altitude and landed on a nearby rooftop with an inelegant _thud_.

Unfortunately the mercs behind him had regained their senses and moved to fire out the building windows. Garrus began sprinting hard for the other end, before the surrounding snipers could get a line of sight on him. Stray shots glanced off his shields now and again, until eventually he reached the building edge and leaped.

Breaking the fall with his jet-boots, Garrus proceeded to run into a nearby alley, the agreed upon drop point should things go sour.

Rising into the night, the Hawk was gone before the mercs could even figure out just what exactly had happened.

**AA**

It appeared that there was a new breed of vermin on Omega. One that had now officially elevated itself to the categorical threat of "minor nuisance". Quite a feat, since very few , even John Ramos, had ever attained any rank at all in Mordin's eyes. This "Good Ghost", if common rumors were to be believed, was actually beginning to solve the puzzle.

Mordin Solus (_NO ONE ELSE)_ had been angry when his trusted captain had dared returned with six fractured ribs and a minor concussion, then reported that he and his men had encountered unexpected resistance when digging for evidence in the the boy's dwelling. The captain was a new hire, one of the men chosen by his seconds rather than by him. Ultimately, the situation had been handled to the best of the mercenary's abilities. After a few minutes of deliberation, Mordin had decided that the squad captain of Breach Squad Six did indeed deserve the Gift.

And while the captain let his gratitude be heard, Mordin considered how the situation had developed. The Ghost had been at Morrin's residence, one of the few places that could still possess evidence pointing to Ramos. The fact that this unknown assailant had known where to look clearly meant that some crucial clue must have been left behind at one of Ramos's hidden facilities, damn him.

Not problematic though. Very little had ever been told to Ramos, much less to his henchman, and so the only thing the interested party would gain would be a few noteworthy names and places, but nothing that could lead back to Mordin Solus (_WHO SEES ORANGE WHEN HE IS SO CLEARLY RED_).

He took another deep breath. The exposure to the serum had caused some degeneration, but he expected full recovery in no less than a day or so. It was an agonizing experience to have one's mind pulled apart, especially one as great as that of Mordin Solus (_NOT HIM. ONLY __**YOU**_).

Oh, how terrifying that first time had been, when a simple slip of a few beakers had inverted reality and shattered his psyche into tens of thousands of pieces. Mental reconstruction had been difficult but ultimately successful, granting him a degree of resistance from further exposure to the serum. Still only resistance though, not total immunity.

"How do we deal with this sir?" Sessak Threl, one of his most trusted men. Very capable at following orders, but lacked intuition necessary for leadership. Exactly what Mordin needed working for him, a tool with no delusions that it was anything more. Ramos had been a gamble that had ultimately cost him.

"Clearly attempting to uncover operation. Motives unknown. Far more successful than most. Unlikely to pose serious threat at such advanced stage. Could still present complications. Needs to be eliminated."

"And how you propose we do that?"

That lack of intuition went both ways of course. While Sissak would never have the brains to betray Mordin, he would always need explicit direction. The brute couldn't think deductively to save his life.

"Investigation will only lead to single outcome. Accomplice of Jayce Morrin, suspected she sent video file. Most likely kept on boy's terminal, then found during apartment raid. Find female, find him. Already have set location in mind."

"Understood. Who do you want me to take?"

"Will lead men myself. Wish to oversee capture personally. Less likely for complications to arise."

Sessak grimaced. Wherever the boss went people tended to _scream_. "You sure? Be easier to just waste him."

Injecting a small needle full of viscous green liquid into one of the two canisters attached on his wrists, Mordin Solus gave a dismissive wave. "Quite sure. Would love test subject for latest strain. Expect results to be quite..." the doctor grinned, "_illuminating_."

**AA**

Garrus returned to the Nest and proceeded to begin stripping off his various layers of armor. Luckily no bullets had penetrated his barriers, saving him from a few hours of mending holes shot through the armor. For now he had the data recovered from Jayce Morrin to analyze and maybe some time to work on the car before he turned in for the night.

It was time to get to work. "Cipher, I uploaded the evidence to the Nest mainframe. See what you can dig out of the files Jayce had collected, and try to find the location of that building in the vid he received.

While Glyph had his many specialties, this was Cipher's area of expertise. Analysis and interpretation. The small red ball materialized next to the large computer installed in the center of the cavern. Brief images of the recovered files began to flash across the screen in succession, and half a minute later Cipher finished his scan.

He turned away from the screen and towards Garrus. "Most of what has been collected here seems to be more for the purpose of incriminating John Ramos. Nothing here seems to pertain to our investigation, just Ramos making a lot of dirty deals with a lot of dirty people."

Perhaps it was a stretch to assume that a low ranking private could dig up substantial dirt on a _very_ well-hidden conspiracy. "And none of them are capable of something like this?"

"No. Though it would prove handy to expose to Eclipse and the Blood Pack. It really is quite fascinating as to how deep the duplicity goes. This idiot has somehow managed to steal vast quantities of money from all three mercenary groups without garnering any attention."

"Then he had outside help. Could be this guy we're chasing, although I doubt it. That would leave some trace we could follow." He had a few suspicions as to who would like to keep the Big Three at each other's throats. But Garrus set that aside for now. If he had any hope of cracking this ring he needed to give it his full attention. The rest could wait. "Are you sure none of this is relevant? They seemed very keen on getting these files."

"There is no mention of any smuggling operation. Most of these dealings involve selling dates, names, and locations. I see no evidence, here at least, that Ramos colluded with his associates any more than being handed a paycheck."

The men could have been sent by their employer as a favor to Ramos, to wipe away any of his other dirty laundry as payment for services rendered. Doubtful though. From what little Garrus could gather he would guess that this partnership was not equal, with each side giving and taking. No, this had very strong sycophantic tones, with Ramos desperately trying to stay in his partner's good graces. Those kind of relationships didn't tend to end well. Garrus doubted that Ramos was even still alive.

Refusing to let this deter him, Garrus chose a to follow a new route. The files on Ramos wasn't the only thing he found on the terminal. "Time to change tactics. Can you trace from where the vid message was sent?"

"Acknowledged. Beginning trace."

A few seconds passed in silence. Then Cipher continued. "Trace complete. It was timestamped three days before being sent to Jayce. I backtracked the signal and it appears to have originated from an abandoned alleyway over in southern Zerr District."

None of the warehouses had been near that section of the station. Interesting, but Garrus needed more. "Not much to go on. Anything else?"

"Wait..."

"What?"

Now the small red ball visibly brightened. "I began to match known vocal samples Aria has on file against the small baseline recorded by the omnitool." It was well known that the Queen of Omega kept tabs on anyone who had caused her organization trouble. Her paranoia was legendary. "After some extensive searching, I can say with over eighty percent confidence that this was filmed by one Janice Bowright."

"That's probably JB then." Obvious really. Probably someone close to Jayce, judging from how that box had been the only thing he had chosen to hide. And curiously enough, Aria had kept her vocal sample, which probably meant that she had Ms. Bowright flagged as a potential threat. Not anything extraordinary, as it took little to make it to Aria's shit list, but enough to conclude that this young woman was more than just a grunt level worker. She was tied to this investigation in more ways than one. "Where does she live?"

"She has no listed residence."

"Family?"

"Unknown."

Not totally unexpected for the search to come up blank. This was Omega after all, it wasn't like there was a dedicated census record. People here mostly recorded where they lived so as not to be listed as homeless while traveling through more civilized circles. It wasn't uncommon for residents to just move into any old abandoned structure.

But that was an option usually reserved for the poor and the desperate. And this woman probably did have other options. Jayce Morrin seemed like a fairly decent person. If this Bowright was someone close to him as the video indicated, Garrus doubted Jayce would just let the young woman go homeless.

"Alright we know two things for certain. One, she was in recently in Zerr District, where she was probably captured. Two, she has personal ties to Jayce Morrin, who had directly worked in the organization we're looking for. When was Morrin last seen?"

Glyph now replied, the process of direct information now falling under his purview. "Two days ago. He was seen walking into an abandoned structure located in Zerr."

Two days ago. That meant that Jayce hadn't been at the warehouse when they pulled up roots. "Southern Zerr?"

"Yes."

That was his link there. Jayce was probably looking for his vanished girlfriend after hearing she had last been seen in Zerr. And when he too disappeared in the same region as Bowright, it wasn't a stretch to assume that the boy had found something big."Forward me the coordinates."

Speed was imperative here though. If Garrus wasted any more time, what little of a trail he had to follow would be swiped clean. He had not time for rest, and so immediately began buckling his armor back on again.

The helmet slid back on and sealed shut with that familiar _hiss_. And with that _hiss, _any fatigue from the previous chase, any weariness from over two days without rest was replaced only with the thrill of the hunt.

Garrus Vakarian was gone, and what they would later call Archangel took his place.


	14. Miasma: Master Yourself

**Note: I rewrote the ending to the last chapter, so you may want to reread it before starting this one. I did so because the old ending felt too repetitive, with Garrus just hopping from house to house. I also added a brief description of exactly **_**what**_** this fanfic is to the prologue, as I realize that what I originally had up is incredibly vague.**

**Miasma: Master Yourself**

Although the Hawk was primarily an infiltration craft, built to move undetected in almost any setting, driving through tightly packed airways in the middle of buisness hours did tend to limit her stealth capabilities. And so Garrus typically navigated Omega via the transit lanes typically reserved for the VI-driven cargo haulers used to carry freight to nearby loading docks. Far too dangerous for almost any pilot to navigate, but not for _Garrus_ to navigate, they provided a fast travel network perfect for moving discreetly through Omega's thirteen districts.

Best of all was the experience they provided. Weaving through so many cars, all oblivious to his presence and moving at hundreds of miles an hour, at speeds even faster than their own was nothing short of _exhilarating_.

But Garrus was forced to set that thrill aside. It could distract from a mission that demanded the entirety of his attention. He narrowly dodged an oncoming Elkoss Combine delivery truck, ignored the expected rush of adrenals and focused on his current target. An abandoned building over in a fairly poor district nowhere near any of the warehouses. Possibly connected to the disappearance of Jayce Morrin and Janice Bowright. But before he could search it, Garrus needed information, and for that he called up Glyph.

"What can you tell me about this place?"

At the speed an Artificial Intelligence thought, Glyph wasted no time in delivering his reply. The partial AI materialized on the dashboard, along with a three-dimensional representation of the building. "A culinary establishment built in 2170 that specialized in dextro-based foods. It closed down thirteen years later after the owner and seventeen customers were killed by an explosive device planted at the western end of the structure. It has since remained abandoned."

That was unlikely. If a building was left unclaimed the local gangs wouldn't hesitate to take it for their own. For the restaurant to just sit there unclaimed for up to two years probably meant that its current owner was just very skilled at hiding his tracks. Further evidence that this place was connected to Ramos and his employer.

Now for the building layout. One floor with a basement underneath, although a section of the roof had collapsed due to structural damage from the bombing. What appeared to be a kitchen dominated the southern end, and was separated from the dining area by a thin wall.

When he neared his destination, Garrus then set the Hawk down about two blocks away from the building and then proceeded on foot. He leaped from rooftop to rooftop, always staying as mobile as possible. He positioned himself at a decent vantage point of the area then zoomed in with his helmet's optics suite.

The place appeared deserted. He could see multiple entrances into the structure, most of them caused by its severe disrepair. No heat signatures were detected inside, but that didn't mean that there couldn't be a trap. In fact, it was all the more reason to stay on his guard.

He glided in and landed on the roof. Garrus then dropped a small sensor pod through the large hole, and when satisfied that it read the building as empty, dropped down as well.

The place was just as bad inside as out. Rusty overturned tables and long rotted food dotted the floor, and everything was caked in layers of dust and cobwebs. The windows were broken and a discarded steel pipe was wedged in the kitchen door.

Still, it wasn't impossible to imagine that this did use to be a restaurant. In blacked out letters above the doorway, written in overly elaborate script was the name DEX DINER. It had been lively here once, one of the few honest businesses left in Zerr, perhaps even all Omega.

Now only a corpse remained. The dream had gone up against the reality, and as always on Omega, the reality won out and took the dream's skull for a trophy.

But introspection could wait, for now Garrus needed to be the detective. Switching to scan mode, he cast a wide net on the search filters. He didn't know what to look for here, so he settled on anything out of the ordinary.

Although even that came up empty. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed for some time, yet Jayce Morrin was supposedly seen entering here two days ago. Dust still coated everything, no footsteps were visible, not even the door looked to have been recently used.

The boy had vanished without a trace. People disappeared on Omega all the time, but some clue was always left behind. A shoe, a bloodstain, even a fingerprint on a nearby handrail.

But here, not even a hair. Highly unusual, but then again what about this case hadn't been?

Reverting to normal vision, Garrus moved into the kitchens. Perhaps Jayce had entered through the back after the front entrance failed to open. Doubtful, but still a possibility.

Prying the pipe from the door loose, he managed to slide through the doors. Skeptic that this area would have anything more relevant than anywhere else in this place, that stubborn determination that had led him here in the first place still pushed him forward.

Again, nothing. Automated reheating units lay inert and rusting. Discarded forks and knives were strewn about everywhere. Dust coated everything. And still no sign that anyone had passed through here in the past two years.

The trapdoor to the basement was open though. One last lead to exhaust. Although it was too much to assume he would find any physical evidence, Garrus had hoped to at least find _something_. Going into the lower levels seemed borderline desperation however. Jayce would have somehow needed to float through the building, not even disturbing the dust, into the lower levels and then leave in an equally invisible manner.

Once inside, he discovered the basement to be predictably cold and dark. Garrus didn't even want to guess what it smelled like, with what food that hadn't been snatched by scavengers now rotting here for a number of years.

He switched back to scan mode, and a very different world came back into focus. The basement was totally empty, stripped bare of any containers or such that had been stored down here in the past. The floors and walls were also spotless, far cleaner than the restaurant had probably been at its peak. But most telling of all, was the word painted in large white letters on the opposite wall.

**PHOBOS**

So they had passed through here. He was afraid of that. Perhaps they had come here before raiding Morrin's apartment, or perhaps had come here after Garrus's daring escape, Regardless, the place had been swept clean once again, and he had been too late.

Garrus moved closer to scan the message, but the situation didn't sit well with him.

Why leave the basement door open if they wanted to avoid attracting attention? Why leave the message a second time, if not to leave a trail to follow? And why at a place that had clearly not been a part of the drug shipping operation, but a clue that lead to it?

It then clicked in place. This wasn't a clue or a taunt. It was something far worse.

_Bait_.

Just as he turned to sprint back up the ladder, the trap sprung. Several things then occurred in rapid succession.

The trapdoor above slammed shut, gas began pouring in through overhead cooling vents, and Garrus found his kinetic barriers to be shorted out. Immediately slamming his external breathers shut, Garrus then engaged his personal oxygen supply that could last up to two hours. It seemed like a terribly inefficient way to try to kill him, but perhaps they hadn't counted on their foe to be so well armored.

But something didn't add up. His suit wasn't detecting any harmful airborne contaminants, and all systems read nominal. It was then Garrus realized that his helm registered the gas being pumped as little more than water vapor.

Or maybe, Garrus thought, they _expected_ their foe to be so well armored. This had been yet another trap, and he had blindly walked into it yet again. A theatric to get him to play along perfectly in their little game.

Any further thoughts were cut off by a sudden lack of oxygen.

Red warning signals began to flash across his HUD, all detailing a breach in environmental systems, filter malfunctions and more. Garrus didn't regard it though, as he was too busy hacking and coughing. Someone had shut off his air supply, and then circulated whatever foreign particles that had gathered around the suit air filters into the rebreathers. Ingenious in that, while Garrus could hold his breath for an extended period of time, he couldn't breathe dirt and soot.

After desperately trying to regain control of his own armor, Garrus finally surrendered, fell to one knee, and ripped off his helmet mouthpiece. While not exposing his face, it did allow him to clear his lungs and breathe once again.

Exactly, as he just realized, what this 'Phobos' wanted. And just as Garrus finished _that_ thought, he found he could no longer move.

_Armor lockout_, his suit read. Two words, so impassively tossed out, as if they weren't his death warrant.

The quiet _pops_ of several stealth fields breaking went off behind him. They had been standing in front of him this whole time. Impossible though, he had scanned this place to the molecular level. No heat sources, not even the muted signatures of a stealth cloak.

Regardless of impossibilities, "Good. Glad to see not stubborn enough to suffocate. Adaptable enough to shifting circumstances, good to know."

Garrus remained silent. He was helpless for now, and wouldn't give them anything in his weakened state.

"No reply? Understandable. Wish to control as much of situation as possible. Even if only element of control is choosing to respond."

Hopefully this person would keep talking and stretch out this out for at least a couple more minutes. Hacking countermeasures had already been deployed, and it wouldn't long before Garrus regained motor functions in his armor again. He just needed a little more time.

"But first, introductions in order."

His assailant, a masked salarian, stepped into view. He was wearing what appeared to be medical attire, but his arms were clad in combat gauntlets. Clipped on his belt were what appeared to be a small machine pistol and an OSD. That OSD was probably his target.

What was most disconcerting though was the mask. Misshapen, jagged, and somehow carrying a sinister undertone, it seemed like a demented child's worst nightmare come to life. A stitched line passed as a mouth, somewhere between a snarl and a frown. Small ragged holes cut for eyes. Several more stitches crossing the face simulated a tapestry of scars.

He kept telling himself that it was just a crude cloth sack, a cheap scare tactic used by an obviously deluded egotist. And yet the more Garrus looked at it, the greater the urge became to tear his head away. It just somehow seemed so _wrong_.

The masked salarian gave a low bow, sweeping the right hand out and keeping the left tucked inward, in traditional salarian fashion. "Professor Mordin Solus." His voice seemed so askew to the mask, as if Garrus expected some demonic growl to come forth.

"**Or as you like to sign as, the Phobos.**"

The corners at the mask's edges turned upward in a faint grin. "Indeed. Might I ask your name?"

"**Someone who would like to know how several tons of sand and a few dozen mercs just vanished in twelve hours.**"

"Impressive, in tracking operation this far. At first believed you to be inconsequential, but then began to move closer than any before you. I...no known affiliation, no alias or identity...intriguing. Curious to know identity or motivations, but neither of any relevance. What matters is your removal."

Mordin sounded like a salarian in his late thirties to early forties, but not _quite_. The sentences seemed forcibly clipped. The dialect sometimes shifted between Second and Third Cyclical, almost as if it were a forced act. Like a human peasant trying to pass themselves off as nobility. Indistinguishable to the common layman, but obvious to a veteran detective.

His HUD read that partial armor control had been established. Now Garrus just needed to keep this Mordin Solus talking. "**Glad I wasn't just chasing my own tail here. I assume you're Ramos's partner?**"

While the mask hid any facial expressions, a faint hint of amusement could be heard in Mordin's reply. "Indeed. Have been tracking you for some time now. Catching you presented welcome challenge. Impossible for me to fully conceal trail, so instead used trail to predict your movements."

"**You caught me, so what do you intend to do with me?**"

"Require only one thing of you. Quite simple really, possibly nonlethal even, though results largely dependent on personal reaction. Different for every subject."

Garrus didn't like the sound of that. Probably just a euphemism for torture. While they could shoot him, by the way Mordin had introduced himself Garrus had the doctor pegged as an egotist. He would most likely want to make Garrus suffer for his interference.

"**Someone as smart as you wouldn't hide a simple smuggling operation. You've got something bigger planned here, and whatever it is, ****I _will_ stop you.**"

"Glad to see you are not entirely ignorant. Can try of course. Welcome to in fact, eager for challenge. Now please..."

Any future plans were forgotten however, when the doctor raised his hand, and a small jet of gas was sprayed directly into Garrus's mouth.

"Breathe de**epLy."**

Suddenly Garrus was/is (which tense to use, if past and present are now one and the same?) now back in the monastery. He had/has inhaled the fumes of burning _r'laeio_ seeds, a powerful hallucinogen that could prove incredibly lethal if taken in anything but small doses.

The small and lithe supplicants he fought/fights blur/blurred together into a single _beast_, all solid lines shifting and melting until the material world became/becomes as fluid as the cool water of a distant stream. Two became/becomes four, four became/becomes fourteen, and then higher concepts such as numbers became/becomes little more than a strange dream. Sight and sound reversed/reverse roles, and for a time Garrus could see the lines of harmony emanating from the _c'liati_ harps outside, could hear the discordant colors of blacks and reds that comprised the rage and hate festering inside his own spirit. It was/is, in a word, _transcendant._

Samara had later told him, while he was kneeling over a toilet violently expelling the contents of his stomach: "_Justice is indomitable. Your will must be of iron. When even your mind has failed you, still you must fight on._"

"**wHAt DO YoU sEE?**", screamed a thousand voices.

The memory ended, and he was once more in the basement as his reality was unraveling at the seams. Causality reasserted itself and it was not a pretty sight. The shifting, screaming many-thing still stood before him. A million faces all blinked past him in rapid succession. And just as Garrus could see who each one belonged to, the face was lost and a new horror took its place.

He saw his father, one eye torn out and a tree root sprouting from the empty hole. He saw Tali, visor cracked open and bits of glass shoved into her soft face. He saw the doctor, the _real _one, that maddened asari who had broken him in so many ways, laughing as she prepared to carve into him once more. He saw Shepard, half her face sheared off by some impossibly sharp blade and whispering the single word of _failure _through the tattered bloody scraps of a tongue. He saw himself, with a bullet hole bored directly between his eyes and a look of pure bliss on his face.

Garrus Vakarian saw them all and he saw none of them, each face more horrifyingly familiar and yet more terrifyingly alien than the last.

If this had happened to him a year ago, Garrus Vakarian would have lost his mind. No question, he would have broken then and there. There is only so much a sentient mind, born and raised in and around a structured society that obeyed clear and logical _rules_, can see before it ultimately falters.

But now, he was something _more_. He had trained for this exact scenario, of having one's mind turned against itself. Garrus had been taught not to depend on something so fickle as _reality_ to guide him down his path.

And distantly, his helmet pinged. _Purge complete, _it said_._ Garrus barely noticed. He had retreated to the deepest parts of himself, and something _else_ had taken over.

Summoning all his willpower into one singular act, what they would later call Archangel met the many-thing's stare, that incomprehensible corporeal manifestation of madness, drew his arm back, and punched it in the face.

**Please review!**


	15. Miasma: FeAr NOtHiNG

**Brace yourselves, it's about to get metaphysical up in here. After all, Garrus has just come down with what a medical professional might diagnose as an extreme case of "tripping balls".**

**Miasma: FeAr NOtHiNG**

Consciousness is fragmented. He forgets who or what he was, with sanity unraveling like an old rug. For now he only sees that the shades block the path to conflict, to the screaming many-thing whose song threatened to take both mind and body.

He sees with new sight. They are spirits of entropy that seek to snuff out the inimical, little more than simple nightmares let loose for the sole purpose of obscuring his way. He cannot allow that, he _will_ not allow that, and so he responds in the only way he knows how.

With violence.

A limb connects with something solid, but the blow is without force. One of the not-things spits its lethal small teeth, but it is a wasted effort. They are fragile things of flame and darkness, as are their weapons. To the weak, the small teeth rip and tear with ease, but he is _more_. He wills protection, and his skin becomes brass, an impenetrable shell that lower _concepts _cannot hope to pierce. The small teeth fall on his hide like water on hot steel. They boil off, and he takes their potential energy into his own.

The shades hope to stop the beast, but they have forgotten the rules. The line is clear, only the many-thing can hope to harm him.

Line. That word. That single _word_. It draws him away from the current and casts his mind upon open, merciless seas.

Line. A thin white thing in a place of forever darkness. He has drawn a boundary that none dare to recognize. None understand why it must exist, none but _him_.

They call him weak, when it takes a strength he was not even sure he possessed.

They call him foolish, for seeing not just what the rest cannot, but what they refuse to.

THeY CaLL HIM...

_I...see a turian. Well built, average height, early-to-mid 30s with Palaven markings on his face. He's wearing a C-Sec uniform (why does that ring a bell?) with a well worn Predator holstered at his side. He's got a relaxed stance, a friendly smile on his face, all suggesting a more easygoing nature. Wait..._

_Is that me?_

Past tense becomes present tense and the brass beast springs to action. But to first fight them he must transition, he must repair what is still left intact and become something more.

Something more. An unexpected echo from the past that the beast cannot place. All he can hear are the meaningless words and lies whispered by the bladed queen. They call to mind hidden doubts and past regrets. _Let even one of them live, and you are already lost._

_And you are already lost._

He sees the line again, equal parts black and white but not _grey, _beckoning toward oblivion. If he falters, it shall take him again, then the shadows will have their chance _and you are already lost._ _Now_ must remain _now_ if he is to have any hope of reclaiming the broken pieces _and you are already lost._

The brass beast falls to one knee, and the shadows raise their extensions to once more spit small teeth. They hesitate however, for the many-thing has spoken. The screaming source of the severance demands that the brass beast be taken whole. He barely notices, as all of this occurs just on the horizon of observable reality _and you are already lost._

This must be resisted. Some semblance of cognition must be preserved. It might already be too late _and you are already lost_. Already he can feel the words seeping into every thought, every possible action, threatening to spin and spin and spin until he is trapped in the circuit for the rest of all existence _and you are already lost._

But this is not an unbeatable foe. This is something that was once named, and anything with a name can be combated.

Find your center, the bladed queen had said. The core self must become inviolate, immovable as the mountains around you, as immutable as the stars in the night sky. No matter how fierce the tempest raging in your soul might be, no matter how much it destroys, you shall _remain_.

How though could he find a self to focus upon, when everything had been taken? The turian with the smiling eyes was long dead, and anything that came after had been swallowed by the stare of the many-thing.

_And you are already lost. And you are already lost. And you are already lost. _He can feel what little remained beginning to dissolve, and soon even the small remnant would be gone as well. The brass skin would eventually falter, and the small teeth would triumph. The many-thing would have its victory and its unintended prize.

No. Defeat is not an option. Survival is not enough. The brass beast gathers what small shards he can and casts them on the anvil. From the broken bits he forges a new identity, a temporary persona to fixate his sanity while he regains what has been stolen.

It begins to take shape. He can see it slowly form under his tender care, still glowing bright red from the anvil _and you are already lost. _It is an ugly and jagged construct, but this new face will serve as an adequate replacement.

To be truly effective however, it would first need a name. Names are used to for self-actualization, to be given a place within the ordered universe. Yes, if this was to work, it would need a name of its own.

Memories are accessed to draw upon an appropriate name. Several possibilities are considered, all of them from the very recent past.

Daniel. Peters. Ramos. Jayce. All of them names, but all of them _complete_ names _and you are already lost_. To take one as his own could establish permanence, it could replace his previous identity. _Sa'lissi, _the bladed queen had called it, in her soft flowing tongue. The Dissolution.

No, for now, he needs something transitory. The brass beast continues to scan the past tense, searching for anything to use in the present.

_Gabriel. One of the seven archangels venerated in heaven. _It could work, but Gabriel is too much of a risk. Personal names cannot be used here, what he needs is a concept that represents enough of his old self, but too abstract to permanently fill the missing pieces.

And then it comes to him in a moment of cognizant clarity that is so very impossible in this fluid mindscape he has built for himself. Wasting no time, he casts it into the fire, and hammers the blade into its final form.

He plunges into the fire, and is reborn.

Once, the brass beast had a name. Once, the brass beast had a face. Once the brass beast was a mighty weapon for his Goddess, a shining blade to raise high and smite Her foes. He served as Her shining general in the crusade against the forces of darkness For his valor, he had been raised up to the highest seat in Heaven.

But nothing is eternal, not even gods. He learned that all too well when he saw his goddess laid low, thrown from Her golden palace to crash down onto the frozen earth below. He had wept blue tears of blood as the universe grew a little darker.

Since then, he had risen up to carry on Her good work. He too had been cast down, and yet he endured. He survived. He rose again to do Her noble work. And although it seemed like all was lost, like his sapient awareness was falling apart at the seams, he would do so once more.

For while the Shepard was gone, her Archangel remained.

The brass beast falls to its knees, but something..._more_ rises to its feet. Archangel looks upon his foes, and takes action.

The Archangel shifts his outward form to match his inward self. Skin melts from ugly brass to living night, lifeless metal eyes split open to reveal emerald fires. What once was a crude statue, a hollow facade of empty armor slowly crumbling beneath a merciless mental assault, has now evolved into a thing of pure dark. His foes are just flimsy falsifications, shadow puppets cast by weak campfires. He is the absence of _light_, the spirit of void made manifest, and any who think to challenge him cannot even comprehend the magnitude of his presence.

Time stops, with the Archangel now attaining total control of the present tense. He sees the notions of _past_ and _future_ to be mere concepts, all that is truly ever real exists within the single instant of _now_. The shades are unable to break free of the universal delusion, and so remain chained to the arbitrary notions of _was_ and _will_.

He summons fire to his hands, and leaps into his foes. They are impossibly slow, for what can hope to match the speed of a newborn demigod?

One shade lashes out, but the Archangel catches the spindly limb. Concept is made solid, and the fragile shadow matter breaks under his hold like dry kindling. He flips over his victim and delivers a brutal blow to the nearest shade. Its face explodes into a thousand shards of half-formed thought as it too is thrown back into the ever-screaming wall. A third had already flung out another volley of small teeth before the Archangel rebuilt himself. The small pieces of black move towards him at glacial speeds. It takes no effort at all to weave between them, and then dispatch their owner with a flurry of impossibly fast blows.

But it is just the start. In the blink of that immutable instant all six of the many-thing's minions are then dispatched, the shades lying still as they slowly revert back into corporeal form.

And then all that remains is the many-thing, standing alone amongst the bodies.

It is silent as the Archangel moves toward it, that impossibly demented creature whose mere presence distorts conceptual reality. The Archangel grabs it by the throat and lifts the many-things off the ever-changing solidscape. He looks into its eyes once more. They are still just as horrifying as ever, slits of yawning madness whose mere gaze seems to fracture the mind.

Something is missing however. Those same eyes had broken the old self, had shattered his mind like glass and sent what survived scurrying to pick up the pieces. But now emerald fire meets the stare of empty void, and the Archangel stood resolute. For he has become Night, whereas his foe is only Fear. And it was the former that gave rise to the latter. It was only when the sun vanished from the skies, and the unseen beasts came out to hunt, that the primitive sapients of the galaxy could give voice to that paralyzing sensation gripping both their hearts and minds.

Yet the many-thing does not avert its gaze, nor show any outward signs of submission. Instead, it simply laughs, a harsh grating sound not unlike the slow grinding of a thousand rusting blades.

"**YoU SURvIVeD! hOW COuLd YoU HAVe POssIBLY suRVIvED mY GiFT?**" The many-thing sounds both shocked and delighted, as if something wonderfully unexpected has just fallen into its lap. It is no surprise that it took perverse pleasure in this. Who, after all, could possibly inflict such tortures on another sapient being, and still keep their own sanity intact?

"**wHaT ArE YOU?**"

For the first time in his short existence, the Archangel speaks. His voice is not of the old self, but of something far more powerful. It does not need the artificial rasp of a helmet vocalizer to convey authority, only its own quiet but firm tone. This is a voice that can build and destroy empires through words alone, convince the common masses to believe in a cause they do not even understand, reshape the galaxy through mere oratory.

But what is most apparent is that when the Archangel speaks, people will _listen_. The many-thing is no different.

He slams the many thing against the wall, keeping his grip firm and his volume even. "I am vengeance."

He strikes the hissing thing again, and this time the Archangel can see it's caustic blood spattered on his hand. "I am the night."

He draws the next words out slowly, punctuating each with with another blow to its thousand faces. "I. Am. Archangel."

Reality began to reassert itself, and the many-thing shifted back into one composite shape. A thousand wailing screams become the Phobos once more. It displays no outward signs of discomfort. "**INtErEStING, SEcoNdARY PERSonlAITy USeD TO mAInTAIN CoGNITioN. BELiEvE I WiLL en**joy cutting your mind open for dissection."

As the drug began to wear off the Archangel begins to hear voices upstairs, cries of alarm as backup personnel realize that their carefully laid trap had failed. He then throws the Phobos to the floor and delivers a brutal kick to the salarian's jaw.

"No. You won't."

The hatch opens, a shadow passes, and he is gone.

**AA**

He does not remember crawling back to the Hawk. He does not remember Rune taking over the automated controls and flying back to base.

All he remembers is that one minute he was Garrus Vakarian, and after an unexpected spiral into insanity, was suddenly something _else_.

Luckily whatever physiological aftereffects the mystery drug might have had wore off about two hours after exposure. The salarian had referred to it as his Gift, which possibly indicated delusions of grandeur on a truly magnanimous scale.

The psychological effects however, were another matter entirely. In order to suppress the Archangel identity and reassert himself as Garrus Vakarian, several hours of _gui_-level meditation was required. He had needed to reshape a fairly significant portion of his psyche while drugged, and that probably wasn't the healthiest thing for his already strained mind. So rather than attempting to reverse it, Garrus instead locked away the other personality. He believed it could come in handy should Dr. Solus elect to give him another sample of his "Gift".

But most importantly, the mission had been a success. He was surprised he still remembered even when he couldn't recall his own name, but Garrus had managed to keep sight of the mission objective.

He acquired valuable assets in his war against Solus. The most obvious of course being the small OSD that Archangel had managed to palm from the doctor's coat.

The other, being slightly more discreet, was a small sample of the doctor's blood, still left on Garrus' armor gauntlet.

* * *

**God, I just love writing abstract. Please review!**


	16. Miasma: His Demands

**Miasma: His Demands**

Garrus didn't quite know what to expect from the small OSD. It had been the only notable item on Solus' person at the time, and was probably found at the restaurant before the doctor had set his trap. To not have it outright destroyed, well, that implied a degree of significance that could prove quite damning indeed.

Whatever his expectations, they couldn't even approach what he saw.

A single video file, titled _NORTHREACH_. Three minutes and twenty-two seconds in length, unencrypted and plain to see.

A human female appeared on the screen, sitting about five feet away from the camera resting on a cheap plastic table. Aged approximately early to mid twenties, fair skin, with brown hair and green eyes. The woman wore the dirty brown jumpsuit so common to the mechanics constantly at work trying to maintain Omega's rusted temperature and atmospheric controls.

While Garrus was fairly certain her identity, he still needed confirmation. "Who is she?"

A hovering blue drone popped up beside Garrus. "Facial recognition scans conclude with ninety-seven percent certainty that is Janice Bowright." Glyph continued, "This video is timestamped three days, twelve hours _after_ the last recorded sighting of Jayce Morrin."

Good, now Garrus had absolute proof that Janice was connected to this, and not just a victim of mere proximity. It had probably been her disappearance that had tied Jayce to this, which meant that the connection between Janice and the Phobos ran deeper still.

Now he noticed that Janice did not possess the glazed look of a station tech, nor the quiet despair of a native Omegan. Garrus saw something much more familiar in those eyes. They were cold, hard, possessed a stare that could bore a hole through a starship.

It was the look of someone with a mission, and who would sacrifice anything and anyone to get it done. It reminded him of Shepard.

The camera shifted, revealing a second human, this time a male. He looked younger than his counterpart, with a shaved scalp and darker skin. He looked nervous, terrified even, with his eyes constantly darting about the room. A faint sheen of sweat could be seen collected on the male's brow.

Garrus didn't need a face scan to tell him who this was. Jayce Morrin, the boy who had unwittingly walked into the center of a web so large and tangled he probably couldn't even begin to comprehend it.

The camera moved back to Janice, who turned to face her companion. She began to speak, her voice kept in quiet and curt tones. "Do you want to start?"

The boy fidgeted, and then adamantly shook his head in reply. As the seconds went by, he appeared to grow increasingly nervous. Jayce did not appear to be here by choice.

"Very well." Janice replied, "I am Agent Alexandra Cross, of the Systems Alliance Intelligence Division, currently assigned to Terminus Branch, verification code Zulu-Lambda-7-9-4-7-Oscar-Lima, authentication phrase 'mother of invention'. This is a final record of the information uncovered by the operation designated as Northreach. Northreach was co-opted with the aid of the Salarian Union Special Tasks Group designated as Coldfront, as well as some elements of the Citadel Council Office of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance, codenames June and August."

So there was another layer to this. "Janice" wasn't "Janice" at all, but she was a part of a much larger game being played here. Garrus wasn't very knowledgeable in the realm of intelligence, but from what little he could gather, for something to involve both the Alliance, STG, _and_ the Spectres, it wasn't pictures of the hanar ambassador's mistress.

Now joining in, Cipher appeared next to Glyph. He asked, "I may not have the strongest grasp in organic behavior, but for such sensitive information, this seems incredibly easy to access. Why record something this compromising on a simple video file, and then keep _that_ on an unencrypted OSD?" He adopted a tone of sarcasm. "Not quite standard operating procedure for spies. Makes it hard to maintain secrecy, when all your secrets are plain to see."

A fair point. Garrus paused the video and responded, "Remember that we didn't find this OSD, Solus did. For all we know, this could have been kept behind a titanium vault and encased in enough firewalls to make even a quarian dizzy. Cross obviously couldn't contact her superiors, so she created physical proof for them to find."

As he was so apt to do, Glyph popped in and gave the results of an unasked for search. "While I am unable to access Alliance Intelligence records, I have found frequent mentions of Janice Bowright scattered in several reports sent directly to Aria T'Loak by Aria's chief lieutenants. While they did suspect her of espionage while Janice worked with engineering crews near Afterlife, they were never able to find direct proof, and were unaware that Janice Bowright was a cover identity.."

True to his function, Cipher quickly began running simulations and formulating theories. "Its possible that Solus eliminated Cross as a favor to Aria, if he isn't actually working for her."

Still uncertain about any of this, Garrus shook his head. "I don't like jumping to conclusions before I have all the facts. Cross could have just been spying on _everyone_, including Aria and Solus. That they both targeted her doesn't necessarily suggest an alliance between the two groups. We won't know for certain until we watched everything on this OSD."

"Agreed.", Glyph replied, the portion of the Oversight that was always hungry for more data, more input for Cipher to later process and create output.

Garrus resumed the video. Cross continued. "My cover is currently compromised, and it is extremely likely that any information I have gathered will be discovered by hostile elements. This video is also unlikely to ever reach my superiors."

She looked down, then back up at the camera. "With me is Jayce Morrin, formerly of the Blue Suns mercenary company," the camera panned back, and she nodded to the human male, "who has assisted in this operation by bringing critical evidence to light. I have deemed it necessary to brief him on Northreach, and have granted him the equivalent of Jade-level clearance."

This was proving to be far bigger than Garrus could ever have imagined. Even if he couldn't understand all of it, he considered keeping this from the mad doctor a victory in itself.

**AA**

"WHERE IS HE?" the doctor roared. After he learned that his men had not only failed to contain a single drugged, unarmed opponent, but then to also let the Archangel _escape_, he was...less than pleased. Even more so now that his men claimed to have not even seen the large cloaked figure exit the building.

When the subordinate failed to stammer out a reply, Mordin Solus sprayed the imbecile with a healthy dosage of his Gift. While the underling may not have been particularly worthy, breaking weak minds tended to help Mordin unwind. Sadly, not even that could soothe him today.

His temper was running high, and that usually tended to make the doctor quite volatile.

While his species fast metabolism usually translated to fast emotional states, with salarians not typically experiencing pronounced emotional states for extended periods of time, the effect was not universal. Regret over past mistakes could still haunt someone for years, emotional bonding could still be felt, even the five stages of grief could take a salarian just as long to process as a human. It was fair to say that it all depended on the individual.

So while Mordin Solus typically processed rage in about a few minutes, it was not impossible for something to anger him so much as to defy his own physiology.

Which this inept guard had found out, to his _immense_ displeasure.

It took very little time for the turian's brain to melt, but Mordin barely paid it any notice. Corpse still bleeding on the floor, the doctor paced back and forth in his own personal laboratory. None dared approached him, for increasingly obvious reasons that would probably be thrown into the Plume before the day was done.

Mordin muttered to himself, his voice low and manic. "Could have it. Why need it? Possible link. Identity however was _given_. Should see no reason for deception. Could suspect incrimination. But would that even matter? We..._I_ am Mordin Solus. That is truth, no matter the crimes."

At his compatriots' urgings, Sessack stepped forward, a worried look evident on all four eyes. "Boss...we'll find that bastard again. Do it the old fashioned way this time," the batarian gave a small grin, "a bullet in each knee. That should get him to cough up the OSD."

Exactly what a brute would say, and right now brutes tended to _annoy_ Mordin. At that, Mordin stopped pacing, and walked over to look Sessack directly in the lower eyes. He then nodded once, took a deep breath, and then proceeded to strangle his trusted lieutenant.

For such a small salarian, he had an unbelievably strong grip. Between the batarian's desperate gasps for air, Mordin then spoke far slower than usual. "That. Is. Irrelevant. He survived my Gift. Don't you see? Can't your festering pustule of a brain _understand_? There is now a living test subject. Every other goal has been secondary, a means to facilitate that _one _objective." Mordin released Sessack, and resumed pacing the room.

Although it was common knowledge that the boss was off, some spill in the lab had apparently knocked a screw loose, it still chilled the veteran batarian to the core seeing just how deranged his employer truly was. He coughed and spluttered as his windpipe shrunk, looked at the corpse in front of him with blood still leaking out of its burst eye sockets, then wisely decided that silence was the best course of action.

**AA**

"Northreach was initially an investigative operation held by Alliance Intelligence to locate and retrieve stolen components of a confidential research and development effort funded by the Chinese People's Federation, and illegally held on the partitioned world of Watson. Its original purpose was to create a non-lethal crowd-dispersal agent, effective on almost any sentient species in Citadel space."

Cross maintained a steady look as she continued. "The project lasted about eleven months, in which scientists studied the effects of the chemical phobiline inhaled, phobiline hydrochlorate produces intense hallucinations that induce involuntary and irrational fears in the subject, and can result in massive cranial trauma, possibly even death, if the subject is left untreated. phobiline hydrochlorate is found to be effective in almost every known sentient species, excluding krogan."

Garrus was now beginning to piece this picture together. He had little doubt that, when the test results the Phobos' blood came back, that phobiline hydrochlorate would show up as the main ingredient in the trace amounts of toxin present.

But that still left the salarians, Spectres, and how Solus even knew about this project. The video played on. "The facility was attacked and destroyed by an unknown group, and it is clear that their target was the project's research data." At that, Jayce seemed to flinch.

A pause. "The Chinese government then approached the Systems Alliance for help, as they feared a galactic incident. Alliance Intel then began to pursue several investigations over the course of seven months to locate the unknown assailants, and these operations were later gathered under the singular name of Northreach."

So Solus' "Gift" was originally an Alliance idea. That probably got under the bastard's scales. While salarians were known to co-opt ideas and data, the most egotistical among them generally considered avoided working on anything but their own ideas. Copying another's designs, or even just building on them, was considered degrading.

And if Garrus knew anything about the mysterious Phobos, it was that the doctor absolutely _screamed_ egotist.

"Northreach, however, made little headway in finding those responsible for the theft. Only one name could be pinned with conclusive evidence, an unknown individual under the alias of Phobos. It was at this point that we were approached by Coldfront."

That was where STG came in then. It was fairly obvious why, at this point, but Garrus let the video play on regardless. There were still a few key pieces missing from this picture.

"The Coldfront Group is dedicated to identifying and terminating dangerous criminal elements of the Salarian Union, the salarian-equivalent of an office of internal affairs or a domestic bureau of investigation."

So obviously, the salarians had also been chasing Mordin. And now that Garrus considered it, the doctor had appeared to be very ex-spook. The manner was too deliberate, the speech too clipped, all indications that he worked with some element of STG.

"They came to us with far more information on the Phobos than we could believe. While they identified him to be ex-STG, they did not know his exact identity. The Phobos had expunged his name and file from the records, suggesting he possessed an extremely high level of clearance."

"Coldfront then requested for the Council Spectres to share any information gathered on the Phobos. Spectres alias June and August had discovered that he was currently working on Omega, with various mercenary organizations for an unknown purpose. I was then placed in command of the Alliance Intel Terminus Branch, to find and arrest the Phobos. I pursued him for a period of three months, and unfortunately garnered the attention of Aria T'loak's own espionage elements."

Her expression then visibly relaxed, as she then gestured to Jayce. "My name is Jayce Morrin, and I was formerly of a private in the Blue Suns under Lieutenant John Ramos." Jayce tried to keep his voice under control, and did an admirable job of it. "After working under him for an extended period of time, I suspected my commanding officer to be engaged in illicit activities. I then began to compile evidence against him and his associates, and then planned to bring this to my superiors."

He looked back at Cross. "During my own investigation, I encountered frequent mentions of a partner that Ramos referred to only as 'Phobos'. Believing this to be a person of some import, I dedicated my full efforts towards uncovering the identity of the Phobos. What I later discovered was..." he grimaced, "unsettling."

Cross took over again. "My team detected numerous intrusions in the Phobos' mainframe, which we knew to have been surely detected. Suspecting outside involvement, I proceeded to apprehend this unknown party. I abducted Jayce Morrin outside of his apartment, and he proceeded to divulge all relevant information on the Phobos."

An unreadable expression passed over her face, and then it returned to that stoic mask. "Originally, I had planned to have a wetwork team extract and then interrogate Mr. Morrin." At that, Garrus could see Jayce wince. "But I returned to find that my base had been destroyed, with my entire team confirmed KIA. While protocol dictated for me to call for extraction and abort the op, I deemed it necessary to continue. The Phobos was constantly moving, and we might never have had the opportunity again."

The video began to near its end-mark, and Cross finished. "I am revealing all of this because the Phobos already knows it. He has known since the very beginning. Any attempt to conceal it would be utterly pointless."

Not unexpected, for Northreach to be compromised. It was probably something smaller scale though, probably a wiretap on the Terminus Branch. Regardless, it was what had probably led to their inevitable capture. But then why continue with a pointless investigation? And why had the tone at the end turned slightly nihilistic, when Cross had previously only been clinical and professional?

Then the other shoe dropped. "And now, here are his demands."

Garrus was shocked. Nothing here gave any evidence that this was in fact a hostage recording. Both captives appeared unharmed, the room looked clean, and they didn't look to be under any outward compulsion.

But then again, the Phobos didn't really need to hurt or intimidate them. Not when he had that spirits-be-damned _Gift_. Faced with the realization that she was already compromised, and would probably suffer a worse fate than any sane mind could possibly imagine, Cross had finally folded.

Now she began to show small signs of fear as she began to read from an offscreen script. "Cease any and all investigations against me, or you will suffer my enlightenment. Cease any and all offensive action against me, or you will suffer my blessing. I know your every thought before your bloated minds can conceive it, and to attempt to even compete on my level is nothing short of insulting. I have stripped the surface bare, and what is underneath is extremely disappointing, hardly worth my attention."

Cross fell silent, and a new voice could be heard. That same shrill tone that had sent Garrus spiraling into inky black insanity. "Now..."

"Breathe _deeply_."

Gas began to pump in through unseen vents in the roof and floor. Jayce and Cross attempted to stay silent at first, but their willpower broke in seconds. It was actually the female that began to scream first, shrieking random words before finally emitting a long, piercing cry. Ten seconds after exposure Cross began bleeding profusely through her nose and eyes, all the while still emitting those horrifying screams. Jayce fared no better.

Thirty seconds after exposure, both their heads exploded with a loud _pop_, like a large balloon.

Before the video cut out, Garrus could hear Solus say one last line. "Behold, my _enlightenment_. Pray you do not see my _blessing_."

Well that was certainly...interesting.

Glyph then piped up, the cheerful note clashing with the now somber atmosphere. "Pardon to interrupt, but I appear to have encountered an anomaly with the blood tests."

Garrus wasn't surprised, who knew what horrors the doctor had inflicted on himself? The blood tests weren't that important though, just a means to try and synthesize an antidote for Solus' Gift. "Yeah?"

"Am I reading this correctly? Are you sure this sample isn't contaminated?"

"I'm sure. One hundred percent from concentrate.

"You must be mistaken then."

"I'm not. Run it-..." Garrus stopped and stared at the test results, and audibly _gasped_. And in an instant, any loose threads, missing pieces, and general insanity came together to form a single cohesive whole.

He finally understood, and in that moment he really wished he didn't.

"Rune, get the Hawk ready. Its time to _end_ this."


	17. Miasma: Forget Everything

**Miasma: Forget Everything**

It is a house of smashed windows and shattered dreams. Once a place of healing, then very briefly a place of horror, and at last the dessicated corpse of hope.

Any furniture not bolted to the floor has been carried off, and what remains has been assaulted and vandalized to the point of almost total destruction. Any tools of the previous owner's trade were the first things taken, and are now repurposed as crude weapons in the hands of vagrants and savages. A learned man might see the irony in that, where once they helped a altruist to heal others, now they only help to hurt. Where once a scalpel might once have been used to help replace failing heart, now it is used to help a heart fail. A learned man might proclaim it to be the ultimate expression of Omega's paradoxical cycle of survival through self-destruction, of turning all implements of creation towards the purpose of destruction, all just to see the next day.

Luckily, there are no more learned men on Omega. And this ruined hulk is one of the premiere examples as to why.

The heating unit has long since been carried off, and the air is frigid. Gozu is one of the lower districts after all, and thus so easily neglected by the skeleton station crew. Battered tech wears down, atmospheric control refuses to work, a local merc skirmish tears a hole through a bulkhead, and the interminable combination of who-knows-what-else has led to the district's inevitable conversion into a meat locker.

But somehow there is nowhere colder than the small hab-unit.

This place wasn't always so frozen, although very few would ever care to admit it. While everyone knows what it used to be, most still see it as a warning, a cautionary tale to ward away any other acts of dissent, however passive they might be. They knew the price paid when resisting the invisible hand. So most forget the good works done there, or more likely ignore them, and the abandoned hulk has now become just another headstone erected in the great graveyard of Gozu.

There are still some however, who remember the place fondly. They remember the little things that made that place truly memorable, that made the time of hope just a little closer and the time of horror just a little more distant.

They would remember the small bouquet of flowers that once sat alongside every bed, freshly watered every morning by hands that you _knew_ found a quiet joy in such a simple routine. And always the same arrangement, one red Earth rose, two Thessian _r'reio_ songstems, housed in a small glass vase. Even if someone didn't like that particular bouquet, well, it was never _really _about the flowers. Consistency was everything after all, the patient needed some semblance of stability while recovering, and nothing provided better stability than looking down the rows and seeing dozens of others in the exact same state of torturous healing, even down to the exact same bedside flowers.

To those who did not need stability, the flowers seemed like a trivial externality, a banal attempt to somehow perpetuate a long-since outdated belief that medicine was somehow more than a necessary cut, or a heavy dose of painkillers. To those who did need stability, waking up from an immeasurable kindness they knew they could never repay and an endless agony now ended, only to see row upon row of rose and _r'reio_...

There could never be a more beautiful sight.

The floors are littered with discarded refuse, used needles, shattered test tubes, the glinting shards of broken knives once bright. But that is not what makes the floors filthy. Rather, it is their color, a brown instantly recognizable by any resident of Omega. Everywhere, the floors are brown, in irregular splotches of varying size and intensity.

It is the color of faded blood. But just human, no, this is actually the product of a spectrum of species, reds, blues, greens, even oranges mixing together and coalescing into the omnipresent dark dull brown. Many had fought here, so very disparate and so very desperate, united in the defense of something actually worth fighting for. Many had died here, in the last stand against the unstoppable behemoth that was Omega. And fight they did. When they ran out of bullets, they wielded sparking rifles as crude bludgeons, when their clubs were bent and broken, then fought with their hands, and when their fingers were broken and their talons blunted, still they fought on through the long night.

Yes, a battle small in scope but enormous in bloodshed had been fought here, the penultimate act in a cold war that only had one realistic outcome. Although "battle" might not be the best word to describe it. "Massacre" would be more appropriate. Because for all, their conviction, they still stared down fully automatic Typhoons.

The people of Omega are subjected to a daily cavalcade of murders, riots, rapes, gang wars, assassinations, and countless other horrors, and Gozu more so than most other districts. Most barely even register. Once a Blood Pack commander passed out from an excessive amount of ryncol and left the vorcha pens unlocked, and for two weeks hundreds of feral vorcha rampaged through Gozu's streets unmolested. Bodies were strung up and torn apart, children were dragged out of their beds to be eaten alive, entire families would simply disappear, and through it all rasping snarls would echo through empty streets. Eventually, Aria sent Gavorn and his purge squads, though most claim that that in itself was a far greater disaster. Even to this day, they are still finding raw meat, even a discarded limb here and there, preserved by the eternal chill.

Yet it was nothing compared to what the Suns did that day, and then what followed. Even the purge squads don't like talking about it, and the only ones who joined the purge squads are too crazy for even mercs to hire.

For that was the day the people finally fought back against Omega, the day they finally demanded more than the short and brutal existence given to them. The hand that feeds was finally bitten, and blood was drawn by long-blunted teeth. Omega won, as it always does, but not without a cost .

The power has long since gone out, and darkness now rules here. The only bright things left are what seeps in from outside, dull light from fading street lamps bleeding through the jagged shards of glass.

It can only end here, in this broken house of ice and shadow. The Archangel will make certain of that.

**AA**

There was always a trail to follow. Every step left a footprint. Every action had an equal opposite reaction. That was a fundamental law of the universe that every sapient species had at some point in their evolutionary development discovered, even if the wording and application varied. So when his agent had reported no abnormal power outputs emitting from abandoned structures, no reports sent off-station containing any relevant information, not even a singular location reporting a higher concentration of sightings, Mordin Solus had deemed the agent to be incompetent.

This was of course, the same freelance ex-asari commando who had successfully rooted out an entire Alliance Intelligence team that had come dangerously close to exposing Mordin Solus to Coldfront. Given time and resources, she could probably find this supposed "ghost", so against the _Else's_ better judgement, Mordin Solus had decided to spare her. Such a pawn was not easily replaced.

And fortune smiled on him soon after. An informant placed in Eclipse reported a message carrying N7 encryption sent from one "Mr. Hice Bu" to an unspecified party. When cracked, Eclipse technicians were delighted to discover a very large sum of money being transferred to a reputable assassin well known to work from Omega from the surmountable fortune amassed by the mysterious Mr. Bu.

A crude feint, transparent to the brilliance of Doctor Mordin Solus. Mr. Bu was nothing more than a childish joke of an alias, the simple scrambling of the word "cherubim". And he was correct, hidden beneath the surface code was a highly toxic quarian scrap program. The alias was obviously meant to peak Mordin Solus' interest, be transmitted to some interconnected aspect of his digital infrastructure, then proceed to breach its internal security to wipe his mainframe clean. Mordin Solus responded accordingly and isolated the message to a external drive.

Sensing an opportunity, Mordin Solus had his staff trace not the original data, but the scrap code instead. What he found was far more interesting. It appeared to originate from an abandoned building in Gozu, but the location was trivial. No, what mattered was that the signal seemed to fluctuate between varying states of intensity, creating a form of electronic "pulse". There were five pulses, then a gap of five minutes, then the pulses repeated. At first the time gap between each pulse seemed random, but further analysis showed even those had a pattern. There was always a gap of 66 seconds between the first and second pulse, then 65 seconds between the second and third, 61 between the third and fourth, and a final fifth pulse 72 seconds later. Nothing for five minutes, and then the pattern repeated.

His men were baffled, but Mordin Solus saw differently. A message hidden in a threat hidden in a message, intended directly for him.

66 65 61 72. Oh, whoever this Archangel was, he was quite clever indeed.

And that was how Mordin Solus was brought to the house of old nightmares.

Sessack pried the rusted door open with strength augmented by Terminus armor, four of his faceless cohorts standing with rifles at the ready. The abused metal shrieked and groaned, but was eventually torn off.

Mordin Solus nodded to the asari beside him, and she quietly drew two monomolecular blades from her back. She looked once to Solus, and then vaulted up onto the roof to find a suitable hiding place inside. Her movements were harried, every action all too eager with the disgraced warrior seeking another chance at redemption.

Sessack and his men then entered the building, concussive shots primed and with the latest auto-tracking VIs installed. They were uneasy about engaging a hostile and unknown element with nonlethal armaments, but Sessack knew better than to question his boss.

Normally Mordin Solus would have brought his full force to bear, three squads of five sweeping each room with Firestorms, or even requisitioning a gunship to level the place.

But not here, not _now_. Not when he at last had a survivor, not when he was so impossibly _close_...

**AA**

The doctor enters the room, armed guards in tow and with a hidden surprise waiting to strike. Garrus can hear the soft scrape on the roof, see the tell-tale shimmer of a cloak shifting into position behind him. The movements are long and lithe, asari then. The knees are bent and the center of gravity is kept low, like a jungle cat stalking a meal. Noticing such habits tended to focus the mind.

A commando then, and skilled at that, but she has not stalked any worthwhile prey in a long, long time, and her skills have been allowed to grow lax. She is in for quite the surprise.

At last Garrus announced his presence, using the voice distorter only to remove the his tell-tale turian metallic flange. Maintaining total anonymity was crucial in his operation, and he can't afford to compromise it. So when he speaks, it is without the batarian rasp, krogan rumble, human pitch, or even mechanical growl. Instead Garrus speaks with a voice as flat as a still lake.

Time to get the ball rolling, as the humans say in their many colorful yet questionable colloquialisms. "Doctor."

The entourage immediately whips around to face him, four rifles aimed for his upper mass. Garrus cannot help but notice that their fingers lie not one the trigger, but on a small stub on the rifle's side. Concussion rounds then, probably loaded with cryo ammunition for a more effective flash-freeze. That indicated that Solus intended to take Garrus alive, which only further confirmed Garrus' suspicions.

Solus seemed unfazed by the Archangel's appearance, always with that smug look of self-satisfaction. Only this time, invisible to all but the vigilante's discerning eye, a clear the doctor's wide-set eyes belied a small sliver of desperation.

"Archangel." The salarian sounded relieved, as if a lost child had at last been found. And, to an extent, one had. "Following your trail was quite the challenge, and most entertaining indeed! Am glad to note that you are not just interesting as a specimen. Hunting you has also proven to be...amusing."

Revulsion swept through the turian, and he suppressed a shudder. Garrus is well aware of Mordin Solus' concept of entertainment. It usually involves a prodigious amount of mental trauma. "I'm glad I still have your attention."

"Quite. Is this all our relationship will amount to?" Mordin Solus spread his arms wide. "False leads scribbled on walls, cold corpses with tenuous connections to a nebulous threat , careful micropulses meant to emit a string of numbers rendered in archaic human code? Is this all we are, two fools knowingly walking into the other's trap, one out of necessity and the other out of supposed nobility? Oh, Archangel..." The salarian smiled a wild, manic grin, "...how I so dearly hope to be proven wrong."

"Then you know why I brought you here."

"I do, but by all means, enlighten me. Well aware of intent, plan of attack, etcetera...only curious as to choice of _locale_."

Garrus could hear the unseen agent move ever closer to their position, and soon she would enter striking distance. Solus was stalling for time.

The vigilante gestured to the ruin around them. "That should be obvious. You don't remember this place?"

Solus blinked once, then twice. "No, of course not."

Very interesting, and very fitting with Garrus' theory. "Then you don't know what happened here? More importantly, you don't know what this place used to be?"

Now the doctor raised a hand to his chin in puzzlement. "Of course not. Trivialities, such as the daily meandering of Omega's dregs are understandably far beneath my notice."

"Ironic."

"How?"

"Let me answer that with a story." Garrus placatingly held up a hand. "It won't take long, I promise."

The doctor smiled that sadistic smile again, the grin of a cruel child after pulling off a fly's wings and then watching it try to squirm away. "Would love to. Unfortunately, have more pressing matters to attend to. Primarily, the dissection of your amygdala." Mordin then turned to a man on his right, "Take him."

Before they could fire a volley, Garrus gave a dismissive wave. Sparks flew from the mercs' rifles, who then promptly dropped the smoking weapons like live coals."Now...if I might begin?"

His men bested, a look of animalistic rage momentarily flashed over the salarian's withered face. Mordin's eyes then briefly flicked back behind Garrus, and then gave a wide smile. "It appears you may."

Nodding, Garrus continued. "Our tale begins just two years ago, when a doctor arrives on Omega from parts unknown. Now this doctor is no ordinary sawbones, another disgraced merc looking to charge truly outrageous sums for half-assed patch jobs. No, rather, he is a genius, a true savant among his people, but more importantly, he is also the rarest of Omega's rarities, more a mutant here than a krogan with three heads. More specifically, he is an altruist."

"You see, this doctor has come only in the noble pursuit of alleviating the suffering of Omega's diseased hordes. So he decides, using past funds amassed from a long and prolific career of government work, to open a small medical clinic in the dilapidated streets of Gozu."

Garrus moved to a desk, and gingerly picks up a small sliver of glass. "This man charges no fee for his work, and every patient he treats is treated equally. At first wary of this kindly old man who asks for nothing, and gives everything in return, he gradually wins their trust through uncountable acts of medical charity." Garrus tosses the glass shard aside. "Eventually, the people of Gozu flock to the only man capable of saving their lives. And as time goes on, some are inspired by the good work he does. They help manage the growing clinic, handling the small tasks that would otherwise divide the doctor's attention. And the strangest thing of all is, they are actually _glad_ to do it. So through the hard work of the doctor and his unwitting disciples, the small clinic grows, and grows, and soon it is servicing not just Gozu, but two adjoining districts as well."

He then pointed to the wide arching doors Mordin and his men just entered through. "Thousands walked through those doors, and the doctor helped them all. Everything, even down to the flowers on the patient's bedside, was treated with the utmost diligence. And for a time, Gozu was a little bit more than the festering pit it is today, and all because of a good doctor and his clinic. But of course, nothing good ever lasts on Omega."

"One day, you see, the Suns came knocking and asked for protection money. The doctor politely refused, then fired off a few warning shots to scare them off. When they came back with a lot more men and a lot more guns, the good doctor paralyzed them with experimental STG nerve gas, and executed them in cold blood. You see while this doctor was a good man, he was also a man of means, and would go to any lengths necessary to protect his clinic and its patients."

Solus had now lost the smile, and instead adopted a look of intense boredom. He was clearly just patronizing Garrus at this point. "Three more times the Suns attacked this place, and three more times the good doctor was forced to kill them. Until one day, when the doctor received an urgent message from a desperate father about his sick daughter. The daughter was too sick to move, you see, and so the doctor would need to make a house call. The people of Gozu begged him not to go, it was clearly a trap, and to go would mean certain death. The good doctor merely shrugged, and said that to refuse one patient would be to refuse them all. Needless to say, he left the clinic and didn't return."

"Is there a point to this inane babble?"

"I'm getting there. You should do well to listen, its going to determine if you actually get what you came for."

The salarian laughed. "Must we be so cryptic?"

Garrus ignored him. "Three days later, Gozu awoke to find the good doctor's charred corpse nailed to the front door of his clinic, and standing outside were the Suns. They declared the doctor to be a warning to anyone who thought they were exempt from 'protection', Now normally the people would listen, shut up, and then try to keep their heads down. But this time was different."

Now the vigilante held up a bent and broken pistol. "This time they wouldn't take it. They _couldn't_. The only good thing to ever come into their lives had just been brutally and savagely taken from them, and this time the people wanted retribution. They wanted _blood_. So they rose up, killed the guards, took their weapons, and barricaded themselves inside the clinic. As you can see..." Garrus looked down at the brown floors, "it didn't turn out well."

He looked back up at Mordin Solus. "After a five day siege, the Suns finally broke in and slaughtered them all. Three hundred people died here, all in the name of the good doctor who once tried to help them. It didn't end there, of course. The massacre here inspired riots across three other districts, and it took MONTHS for Aria to bring back order."

Mordin was still unamused. "I ask again, what is the _point _to this juvenile tragedy?"

Garrus replied. "If I were speaking with anyone else, I would say that that story is partly why I'm here in the first place. Its proof that Omega can be changed into something better. The potential is there, and all it requires is something more to rally on than a charred corpse."

A spark of interest crossed the salarian's features. "And now that you're speaking with me?"

"I'll get to that. But first..."

Silence briefly followed, some invisible trigger was pulled, and the huntress finally leapt forward with both blades drawn. She shot forward from some unseen corner with the force of a missile, ready to do what she did best.

Garrus responded by casually side-stepping, catching the astounded asari mid-jump, then redirecting her momentum by smashing her into the floor, and all in one motion. His reflexes had been honed by snatching throwing knives out of the air, and it was significantly easier to repeat the process with a far larger and far slower target.

The salarian registered this with a weary sigh, then turned to his other men to no doubt order them to draw their concealed secondary sidearms. Instead, he turned and saw his men rendered comatose and lying on the ground. Unknown to him, they had been knocked unconscious at around the point when the Archangel first began his tale. It was only the hacked motorized joints in their armor, locked into the same rigid stance, that originally kept the men upright.

But again, the doctor himself had admitted this to be a trap. No doubt the Phobos had contingencies in place. But a jamming field had been set up around the building, no messages can be sent or received, and so Garrus has bought himself a small amount of time. Minutes, at best.

Mordin Solus looked to the vigilante, standing as if nothing had occurred at all, then back to the still forms of his guards, closed his eyes, and sighed again.

Garrus took a step towards the doctor, crossing only a foot in distance yet somehow doubling in size. "What you should take away from the story isn't some metaphor for life or death or some other sappy platitude. No, all I'm asking of you is to remember the doctor's name. Even if his accomplishments may seem impossibly naive and ultimately futile, even if you take me in chains and cut open my brain and never pay this meeting a second thought, you should remember his name."

Sensing this conversation drawing to a close, the madman adopted an exaggerated look of anticipation. "And just who is this insipid fairy-tale you so maddeningly idolize?"

"He was a salarian, but the opposite of you in every respect. He came here after a controversial retirement, to the one place that fell out of STG's reach. His name, from what certain friends of mine could gather from any unsecured database they could get their hands on, was Doctor Mordin Solus."

The Phobos gave his widest smile, a grin that almost didn't seem biologically possible. "Is that really your grand reveal? That I'm an _imposter_? Oh, Archangel, and here I thought you possessed _some_ modicum of intelligence."

"Oh, that's not all."

"Of _course_ not. What other brilliant revelation do you plan to throw out next? That I'm actually part-krogan? That Aria T'Loak was murdered months ago, and I'm wearing her face on the side?" The doctor gives a bitter laugh, and then a condescending glare. "Quite disappointing, in that I once thought you actually posed a tangible threat. But you are even _less_ than I originally estimated, you are an egotistical brute grasping at conclusions you know can't possibly be-"

The salarian's tirade was cut off by a datapad smacking him square in the face. He then stops to skim its contents. And for reasons perhaps not even 'Mordin Solus' can comprehend, his eyes slightly widen in shock.

Garrus took that mute bafflement as his cue. "Those are the forensic results from a blood sample, your blood sample, that I acquired from our last encounter. While they confirm the obvious, severe infection by phobiline hydrochlorate and a dozen other compounds, that isn't what's strange."

Mordin Solus opened his mouth, then closed it. No words came out. Because now the lie was revealed. The one lie that held together the tattered bits he called sanity.

"Genetic testing revealed that this is _not_ the blood of Mannovai Mas'ik Mistir Mos Mordin Solus. And the sad thing is, I think you actually believe you are Mordin Solus."

Now the doctor's face contorted in rage, and any pretense of civility evaporated like an ice block in the Plume. "NECESSARY LIES! FABRICATIONS MEANT ONLY TO PROTECT! REVEAL OUR NECESSARY DECEPTION AND YOU DOOM US ALL!" The nameless salarian now screamed at the top of his lungs, spittle gathering in the corners of his mouth. "YOU WOULD DARE LET THE DARKNESS IN!?"

The Archangel was unfazed. And to his shame, a small part of him relished in seeing the impossibly brilliant sadist reduced to this animalistic state. "Oh yes I do. Thank me doctor, because I'm about to free your twisted little mind."

"NO! YOU MUSTN'T! YOU CAN'T!"

And now for the grand finale. After so much set-up, after so much time spent lining up the impossible shot, Garrus at last loaded the bullet, readied the rifle, and fired.

"Your name is Maelon Alesh. And you are insane."

The good doctor screamed.

* * *

**So yeah, I've been gone, sorry about that. I have my reasons, and they most certainly have nothing to do with a debilitating addiction I've acquired to a certain raggedy man and his blue box. No siree****, *cough*. To my few readers still alive, know that updates will come a LOT faster now. **I realize that a two month hiatus can be a liiiiiiiiiitle grating (please don't come at me with torches and pitchforks), so to make up for it, here you go: my longest chapter yet, with an unexpected twist! 

**Hope you guys like the Mordin/Maelon reveal, the idea just came to me in a fever dream while planning out the Miasma arc. Seriously, keeping my mouth shut over all the "ZOMG MORDIN BAD GUY" reviews was insanely difficult while writing this arc, and every time I read one of I would just grin and twirl my mustache. And don't worry, next chapter we'll go more in depth over Maelon's fall into madness.**


	18. Miasma: The Easy Way Out

**Miasma: The Easy Way Out**

"PAIN!"

Soldiers, armed to the teeth and with a penchant for punishment, burst into the clinic. They were decked in armor thick enough to withstand orbital assault, they brandished small arms that were anything but, and they were just the tip of a very long and very sharp spear.

Twelve men entered the building through every possible entrance, as rusted doors were peeled back, windows smashed open, and sometimes even entire sections of the wall removed. And outside, two Toxin attackcraft wait with main guns spooled and ready. The Phobos had brought his full force to bear here, along with enough firepower to kill the turian, his family, and the planet they had the misfortune of standing on.

He and his work were not invisible here, they couldn't be. Every action had a reaction, every operation, deal, and necessary murder left some trace footprint that would inevitably be overlooked, and that others would stumble upon. So yes, Mordin Solus paid his cut to Aria, at a significantly higher rate in fact, so as to maintain secrecy. But while she believed him to just be another two-bit ex-spook with dreams of becoming the fifth major player on a station that liked even numbers in its rulership, he was so much more. If Aria's intelligence network was even half as competent as she believed them to be, the supposed "Queen", who considered herself the entirety of Omega, would regard him very differently indeed.

Sessack and his hired muscle were simply the auxiliaries, pawns to move freely around the board and discard at will. Let the few who knew of the mad doctor's existence believe him to be another mundane crime lord, another baron attempting to carve out his small fiefdom only to be exterminated just as he reached some semblance of notoriety. Let no one suspect that a small salarian doctor had an unseen army at his beck and call, capable even of seizing this pathetic mound of refuse inexcusably referred to as a habitable space station from one deluded asari pirate who saw the illusion of power so carefully built around her, and was actually stupid enough to mistake it as some inkling of authority.

"AND RAGE!"

Very rarely however, did Mordin Solus call on his true servants. Very rarely did they need to step out of the shadows and risk everything the doctor had worked for. Usually it was clean-up duty, fixing or outright erasing a mistake made by one of Mordin Solus' more incompetent partners, such as John Ramos. Sometimes it was for external operations, acting outside of Omega and into the Terminus, where the Phobos wanted everything to be under his direct control. But today...

The doctor's mind was, to put it mildly, fragmented. It was a conceptual battleground of countless spinning pieces all trying to fit together into a cohesive whole, despite the fact that some of those pieces didn't fit, shouldn't fit but did, and sometimes weren't even his to begin with. Metaphorically speaking, it was like shattering a stained glass window into ten million individual grains of glass, losing half of those grains, mixing the rest in with sand, and then attempting to piece the window back together from memory, after a head-on collision with an oncoming aircar. With the added complication of the window actively trying to stay broken.

"AND MADNESS!"

So after the altercation at the diner, a piece of the Phobos (perhaps the piece that wanted to reveal the truth, or perhaps the one that wished to hide it) knew the ramifications should his newfound foe have obtained some genetic evidence, thereby exposing the ruse, and put in place certain precautions. To Mordin Solus, calling on his private forces in case Sessack once again proved his incompetence seemed like well needed insurance, despite the fact that never before had they been used for something so arbitrary as a back-up plan. And to Mordin Solus, making the trigger word to come and storm the building, to even disengage the jamming field, something as odd as "pain" simply seemed like a trite idea barely worthy of note, despite the fact that his subconscious had self-trained itself to never utter that specific word unless in the case of total mental breakdown.

The Phobos had planned for this eventuality so subtly that even he didn't know about it. Unfortunately, it was too late. The floodgates had been opened, the trap had been sprung, and no amount of firepower could stop the salarian's steady slide into insanity.

Twelve men charged through the building. They moved in squads of two and three, floodlights from the Toxins outside illuminating every square inch of the central atrium. They were prepared for anything, and judging by the frantic tone in their normally reserved leader's voice the situation was dire indeed.

But all they found was a gibbering madman, alone in the dark and surrounded by bodies.

The first to fall was a sniper on a nearby rooftop. As she surveyed the surrounding area, beady eyes focused intently through the scope, she thought she spotted movement just out of the corner of her eye. The ex-Alliance Infiltrator swept her rifle up for a second look, and she saw it. A living shadow, with eyes impossibly green, staring back at her. Before she can even pull back the bolt, fifty yards away the shadow flicks his wrist. Then darkness takes her...

Next came the men in the atrium, and they were already lost. For they were divided, and in doing so had only walked directly into the hunter's path. They moved like professionals, they most likely _were_ professionals, but they had never fought anything like the Archangel before.

Not much later, but after much pain and suffering, the Archangel again stood alone. Their bodies lined the halls, weapons still unfired and looks of shock hidden behind helmeted faces.

The Toxin pilots noted the prolonged silence, but were unsure on how to proceed. This entire plan had been sloppy, from the execution of the jamming field to only taking batarians as bodyguards. Normally they would level the place, erase any trace of their existence and then explain away the casualties as a necessary loss. But the Phobos' men have never needed to actually _protect_ the Phobos, and so were now at an utter loss.

As the pilots continued to ponder their next move, they failed to realize that precautions had already been put into place.

Twenty meters below the hovering craft, hidden in a large dumpster, explosives surrounding an unshielded element zero core salvaged from a junked Trident mech are detonated, and the resulting explosion of iridium mixed with tainted eezo functioned as a crude EMP. The pilots could only frantically scream cries of frustration, before the power cut out and the Toxins' engines sputtered and died.

**AA**

The Archangel strode back his original standing position, the center of the clinic's main lobby. Mordin Solus, or Maelon Alesh, apparently, was still quivering on the ground muttering that same mantra over and over. The salarian didn't appear to have noticed any of the previous altercation, had shown no outward signs of emotion as Garrus dismantled his elite guard, or even budged from that exact spot on the floor. The "doctor" merely remained there, a pale remnant of a pale remnant.

A mixture of pity and revulsion overtook the vigilante. He could not imagine a worse fate for any sapient mind, to be trapped inside a mind actively working against itself. Perhaps Maelon was always insane, and the Gift only exuberated the sickness. Perhaps it was only an accidental exposure that set a relatively young salarian down this dark path.

Regardless, Maelon needed to be set free.

At last, Garrus spoke. "Maelon."

For the first time in seemingly a long time, Maelon at last responded. He shook even harder now, gently rocking himself while still mindlessly repeating that same phrase.

"Pain and rage and madness and _hate _and pain and rage and madness and _hate _and pain..."

Garrus had seen many horrors in his years at C-Sec and later with Shepard. He had seen the handiwork of a truly demented elcor serial killer on the Citadel. He had seen the horrors of Doctor Saleon on the _Fedele_. He had seen soldiers become slaves and then feral beasts on Virmire. But this...

For whatever reason he made it, whether by accident or incident, Maelon's "Gift" was something truly abominable.

Sighing, the Archangel continued. "I don't know if you can hear me Maelon, I don't know if some small part of your psyche still remembers who you used to be but..."

He was briefly interrupted by a Toxin crashing through the roof. Dust and debris rained down around the pair, and a loud creaking sound could be heard echoing throughout the abused structure. Amazingly though, the ceiling held firm. Perhaps the clinic was sturdier than Garrus believed, still solid after years of neglect and abuse. It was a comforting thought, that such an enduring symbol could weather Omega, for a time at least.

Again, his one-time foe simply lays there in ignorance, not even acknowledging the small aircraft now wedged above him. Perhaps the doctor has finally snapped, and that mantra is the only thing the salarian has the brainpower to say anymore. It doesn't matter, so long as the possibility of salvation exists, Garrus will try to save him.

"I know what its like, to have that Gift shoved in my face. I know what its like have everything you are stripped away, to leave only a mental husk desperately scrabbling to be whole again. I could feel myself slipping away, at one point."

It was so quiet in the clinic, with just two madmen. One was spilling secrets, the other was spilling sanity. And Garrus hoped he was the former here. "At first it isn't so bad. You remember you were something more than just a concept, and you're _this_ close..." Garrus held his fingers closely together. "To getting it all back. But then it starts. Just a single sentence, or phrase, or I'm guessing even word from a past you didn't think you had that keeps repeating over and over. It keeps going in an endless loop for so long that you're desperate to escape from it, desperate to hear anything else, desperate to _be_ anything else but that damned phrase."

At last, Maelon stopped his frantic chanting. He stopped rocking and froze, eyes now focused on the Archangel, who took it as a sign to go on.

"So you look back, for anything resembling an identity. You try to find yourself again, but you can't, because the Gift took that. But you do find identities, people, personas, aliases. You know they aren't you, but that doesn't matter. You just need to escape, so you become a new person."

Now Maelon whispered something back. It was deathly quiet, like mist rolling across a graveyard. "It was so _dark_. And we couldn't find our way _back._ So we took His name, the only name we knew was enough."

"Your mentor."

Weakly, the salarian nods.

"But the mind knows who it used to be, and subconsciously tries to remind you. But it also wants to protect you. Its why you so easily revealed your identity to me, and why you couldn't accept the truth when I first told you. Its why you speak in Third Cyclical but unknowingly revert back to Second."

Now, the salarian snarled. He weakly pushed himself up and spat at the Archangel's feet. "You speak of it as if it was a punishment. As if we didn't mean for this to happen. I am something more, _Archangel_, I have now surpassed the late Mordin Solus in every aspect. My Gift has _enlightened _me."

Interesting. Was that guilt, or acceptance? Was that Maelon embracing his new identity, or the Phobos rejecting his old one?

Garrus still had to try, despite the ever mounting futility of the task. "Maelon, I can help you. I have no doubt that STG has the facilities..."

"NEVER!"

The increasingly mad doctor charged Garrus, a long and sharp syringe in hand. It is almost painfully easy to sidestep the Phobos, and smash him against a nearby desk.

Maelon wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. He smeared the smudge against the wall, then stood up. "Will never be taken by those cretins. The magnitude of my intelligence is beyond their comprehension, so they label me mad!"

He raised his arms and sprayed the deadly gas. This time however, Garrus was prepared, and had his helmet sealed tightly shut. After seeing his attack had failed, Maelon's eyes grew ever wilder, and now the salarian drew his pistol. He fired once, twice, but the Archangel's barriers easily deflected both shots. Garrus calmly strode over and ripped the gun from the doctor's trembling hands.

"I wanted power! I wanted control! The Voice promised, and all it wanted was a simple service rendered. Soon, I will rule this station through my Gift! Soon, millions more shall taste the sweet fruits of my Gift!"

Garrus had stopped listening to Maelon's insane ramblings. Now there would be no forgiveness. "You're nothing, Maelon. An immature child whose nightmares were stretched into something far more perverse by your own mistake. You have nothing left to throw at me, Maelon, and as soon as I take you down your organization falls apart."

Maelon screamed, this time a cry of rage and not of madness. "You can't kill _me_! I am now Mordin Solus, whether I was before or not is irrelevant! I am better! I am the Phobos!" Perhaps Garrus was mistaken, but was that terror evident in the salarian's wide eyes? At last the doctor screamed out, "I am Fear Incarnate!"

Now the vigilante was silent. No more words needed to be said. He silently advanced on Maelon, each step sounding like a hammerblow across the silent mausoleum. And when Garrus was close enough, he could see that, oh yes, the doctor was very scared indeed.

Before darkness took him, Maelon thought of pain. Not his physical pain, or even the pain of being bested, but of the pain he would inflict upon the upstart Archangel.

Then he thought of rage, and how before today he did not even know the meaning of the word.

Then he thought of madness, and how that was just a clever deflection people used to ostracize the rare individual that dared to be smarter than them.

Then he thought of hate, and how very good it felt to _revel_ in it.

Then he thought of pain...

**AA**

Two hours after a rumored raid on Gozu's abandoned clinic by an unknown party who promptly vanished from the scene, a STG infiltration cell on the nearby Terminus world of Tzri was covertly forwarded the location of a dangerous convict wanted by the Salarian Union. Within a day, a ship was sent out, and Coldfront operatives were delighted to discover the Phobos unconscious and neatly tied up in an Omegan shipping crate.

In a small cell, in perhaps the most closely guarded secret on Omega, a weathered old salarian finally received the news. He was not happy, or sad, merely resigned. Despite lacking a horn and an arm, he still struck an image of salarian nobility, and acted the part. The loss was regrettable, of course, but not entirely unforseen.

True to Garrus' word, the Phobos' organization did fall apart. The sole binding agent had vanished, along with its muscle, and most left the warehouse within the week. They owed no loyalty to the doctor, and were all too eager to leave him and his mad whims behind. Whatever plans he might have had, whatever insane designs he wised to unleash upon unsuspected millions, would never come to fruition.

That left only the room, where no light was ever permitted to shine.

Within the room, something stirred, like a mountain slowly awakening. A mind the size of a galaxy focused on a point in space and time so impossibly small, yet critical to its machinations. It had kept its presence hidden to all but the salarian for months now, months of impossibly precise preparation ruined once more by the inherent flaws of the organic. But no more. Plans needed to be put into effect, action needed to be taken, and above all, _It _needed to be found.

Subtlety was not its forte. Subtlety was something suited for lesser minds, for beings forced to exist in a universe that did not acquiesce to their every demand. No, the time for subtlety was over, now it could do what it did best.

_Direct intervention is necessary._

Across a road none had ever crossed, at the heart of a storm raging since the beginning of the galaxy, an old ship was again called to war.

And the Voice was pleased...

_I am assuming control._

**Finally! After what I assume to have been three, maybe four months, we're finally done with the Miasma arc. Hope you all liked the story's first villain, and don't worry, there will be plenty more to come.**

**Next chapter we start our new arc. Whoo!**


	19. False Gods: Open The Box

**False Gods: Open The Box**

_Two years ago._

When the shuttle first touched down on Tla'lok, Zel fell into a silence. He would not ask again if his apprentice was certain of this path, once had been enough, and the answer had been sufficient. Zel was like that, every word, every action was said or done only if deemed all, if there was one thing the bitter old quarian despised above all else, it was redundancies.

They flew over low jungle for a few minutes before Zel managed to find an open clearing where he could land the aging shuttle. It settled down with a rough thud, the landing thrusters flattening the vegetation into a small irregular circle. Once the ship stilled, dozens of miniscule creaks and pops echoed throughout the cabin as the patchwork monstrosity emitted another groaning sigh, a telltale sign of its advanced age.

Zel got up from the cabin to face his apprentice, his mask and body language as always drawing a total blank. Both then stepped out of the shuttle into the cool night air. He stood stiffly at attention, as if this were a military procession, then silently held out his right hand in an unspoken offer.

The turian stared at his mentor with a look of weary resignation, then gave a small nod and solemnly gave the quarian a wrist clasp. No heartfelt goodbyes, no sentimental gestures, only the due respect the apprentice owed his mentor.

Anything else was redundant, outside of the Mechanism and so a distraction..

Garrus knew that Zel knew this was a bad idea. He _had_ to have known. Zel only saw the world through a style of brutal logic entirely his own, always boiling away the superficial until all that remained was the cold calculus of war, such was the mindset of the exiled admiral of the Migrant Fleet. Zel had rounded down Garrus' odds of success to a vanishingly small figure, outweighed every potential gain against every potential risk to find the latter significantly outnumbering the former, and yet...

If Zel disapproved, he gave no outward sign. "What is the first law?" the old quarian rasped, his synthetic throat giving him a voice with the texture of rusted gears grinding themselves into nothing.

Always testing, always probing for the expected bout of ignorance, yet every time Zel asked a small part of Garrus still felt himself at a loss. It still took a fraction of a second to find his answer, when it would take him less time to kill a man. "Industry. The certainty that everything that occurs has occurred, and so can be predicted. Like cogs in one universal machine."

Zel his student didn't truly believe his answer, and was again just reciting a memorized mantra like so many weeks before, but Zel prompted no further inquiry. At least the turian stood up for his beliefs. Giving an almost imperceptible shake of his head, Zel turned to step back into the shuttle.

Still facing away from Garrus, Zel gripped the door's edge. After a brief silence, he added, "You will fail, Lantar Sidonis. It is your place in the Mechanism."

Ah Zel, always the optimist. "If it were only that easy. No Zel, I think I've played my part a long time ago. Now all that's left is a husk, trying to pretend it still matters."

"Semantics. Everything that occurs has occurred, regardless of the choices we make."

"I prefer a slightly brighter outlook on things. Better than your endearing self-destructive nihilism anyway. Might be a bit more naive, but at least mine's a bigger hit at parties."

"Fight then. Die, if you want." Zel stepped back into the shuttle. The quarian turned to look Garrus in the eyes, dull silver orbs just faintly visible beneath the faceplate. At some unknown signal, the shuttle readied for liftoff. A storm of loose dirt and detritus was kicked up by the dropship's jets, and slowly, it rose off the ground. Garrus watched as it lifted off, soon swallowed into nothingness by an impossibly starry sky. Zel still stood there, hovering a few feet off the ground, then turned back into the craft.

"It's all the same in the end." The door shut behind him.

Garrus watched as Zel lifted off, four small points of blue light soon swallowed into nothingness by the impossibly starry sky.

So one journey ended, and another began. He took his first steps into the endless jungle, and like always, Garrus Vakarian never looked back.

**AA**

_Present day._

A good day for the asari councilor could be pushing through a new policy to expand the jurisdiction of the lower Council courts to the prosecution of elected officials in the cases of perjury or embezzlement, thereby freeing up more time for the councilor to focus on the far more pressing issue of her freefalling approval rating. Give her a smoked Cynoian waterskipper, served with a fine Armali red from her personal favorite year of 1396 CE, and it might even be a day she didn't have to end by downing as many sleeping aids as medically possible and passing out for three to four hours.

A good day for Harg, minor slaver in a minor slaving ring, was taking a gram of sand in the morning and his superiors not taking notice. Usually every morning they would check under everyone's faceplate, scan all four eyes for any tell-tale signs, even ask them a few questions that required even the smallest modicum of lateral thinking to answer.

But something was off today. Sure the complex was emptier, on account of most of the men off transporting the stock, and the man in charge for the day was Sur, who couldn't hold his liquor if it was magnetized to his armor yet still drank copiously on the job, but that was no real excuse. You always got checked, and if you weren't clean you'd get a face full of electrized net.

Although then again, as the humans said, don't gift a looked horse in the mouth. Or something. If his luck were so miraculous that the one day he walked into the compound blitzed out of his mind was also the day in five years of gainful employment that his superiors decide not to carry out such a simple task like asking him what the seventh letter of the batarian alphabet was, he wasn't going to question it.

Then Harg and his boys were told to go check on one a team of snatchers that had failed to report in, all the way out in the ass-end of nowhere that was Nalli District. It was perfect, they could waste time by getting drunk off cheap ale and then take random pot shots at passing vorcha, blame the long delay on some dumb crap like Eclipse jammers or a skirmish with another minor slaver ring muscling in on their turf, then come back to base and save themselves a hard day's work.

A very good day indeed.

What Harg did not expect, on this very good day where everything just seemed to move so slowly and he seemed to move so much more quickly, was for things to get complicated.

The transponder signal emitting from the missing squad was coming from their last target, an abandoned warehouse that had recently become a home for wandering vagrants. With no one to miss them, and with an actual financial reward from Aria for getting them off the streets, they were prime targets for small time slavers like Harg.

There were signs all around that they had passed through here. Scorch marks from misfired submission nets, small clusters of foot-long blades embedded in the walls, the lazy missing slavers had hit this place hard alright, problem is they shouldn't have. This was an easy snatch-and-grab, how could two dozen starving homeless prompt the dumb bastards to break out the heavy gear?

Oddest of all, there was also a series of large crates stacked against the back wall, and his men swore they could hear movement inside them. The crates bore the insignia of the Batarian Hegemony, so they were property of the slavers, which probably meant they were filled with whatever stock the missing squad had managed to snag.

Harg ordered his boys to pry the first one open, expected the same huddled masses of grimy Omegan waste, some silently screaming for salvation and others wetting themselves in fear as the gravity of their situation set in.

What he did not expect were forty batarians, each bearing the mark of the largest slaver guild on Omega, and all of them bound and gagged.

Now beginning to come down off his sandblasting, Harg dragged one of the captives out, then moved to undo one of his restraints. The heavyset batarian's mouth were stuffed with a large rag of dirty cloth, which if Harg inspected more closely would carry a trace scent of anesthetic.

"The fuck is going on here?" The aforementioned downer was putting Harg in an especially irritable mood, and had little patience to waste on these idiots. Probably got jumped by one of the bigger gangs, then left here as some kind of warning.

The batarian was livid, a fearful, frantic look in all four eyes as he shouted. "There's no time! We need to move! He's gonna blow it if we don't warn-"

But the rest of his warning died off as he looked up with a look of pure unmitigated awe.

Harg looked up to see a bright light shining through the large gap produced by the decrepit building's sagging roof. Serving as a direct port of call on the station, Nalli was a district built on Omega's outer surface, protected from the vacuum of space only by a thin layer of artificial atmosphere. Normally Harg would shoot up on Hallex and stare at the singing infinity, losing his mind for hours on end in the silent black.

But no, this wasn't just bright. This was blinding, like a new sun had materialized a few hundred miles off Omega's docks. The flash only lasted a few seconds before fading, but Harg still saw spots for quite a while after. And all the while the other slaver was throwing a fit.

"No, no, NO!"

A ship's eezo core had gone into critical, nothing unheard in a place where every ship passing through violated at least three mandatory safety regulations. "No big deal, just some idiot who atomized his own ship."

At that, the batarian fell silent. He slowly panned his head down from the dull flare in the sky to stare at Harg with a look of dumbfounded desperation. "Are you serious?"

Still longing for the brief time where everything seemed so much sharper and he could will blue light to his fingertips, Harg didn't actually care enough to figure out what that meant. Idiot probably smuggled on the side, and that ship carried the slaver's next payday. No reason why he should care about that though. "What's the problem smuggler, your haul's gone an' blown up? Should hire better crew then."

"You think I'm...you _actually _don't get it? Argh!" The mystery batarian gave a frustrated cry. "Doesn't matter, what clan are you, Butchers? Good, you're part of the group, so get on the comm and give me a direct line to your boss. We need to tell everyone"

That was not going to happen. "Look asshole, I don't know who you are, or why you and your boys here decided on a private little fuck-fest, but I ain't doin' fuckall for some uppity little _shit_ that I just found trussed up like an asari bitch who didn't put out on the first date." Actually, comming his boss would remind the drunkard that Harg still existed, which would ruin any and all plans to skimp work and get blasted. And then his good day would be absolutely _ruined_.

Now the slaver got angry. Nasal slits flaring, eyes widening, upper lip drawing back in a snarl to reveal pointed teeth, he seemed a hair's breadth away from tearing Harg's eyes out and stringing them up like tinkling bells. The other slaver muttered something incomprehensible, then spoke in a quiet _hiss_. "Oh by every god..._Think_, you pathetic excuse for varren crap. That flash was too bright for any of the external docks, those are a few hundred miles off Omega's orbit. So the ship was in low orbit, and not a lot of people can pay off Aria to keep their crap so close to the station."

Harg still stared on, dumbfounded.

"And there are about a hundred and twenty of us in these three crates, about enough to man a small crew on a ship never really meant to fly..."

"Still not getting it."

"IDIOT! What is the one ship on this station that's rich enough to pay the highest docking fees, manned entirely by batarians..." at this point, the slaver's voice escalated to a roar. "...AND THAT A BOUND AND GAGGED _SLAVER_ WOULD ACTUALLY GIVE A FUCK ABOUT?!"

Synapses fired, muscles pulled themselves to breaking point, mental cobwebs were slowly scoured, until finally a small worm of enlightened thought broke through the murky morass of Harg's mind.

"Oh."

Because the ship currently reduced to its component atoms, still burning like a floodlight over the streets of Nalli as thousands looked up as confusion gave way to a newfound joy, was the _Seventh_, the neutral meeting ground of every major batarian slaving clan on Omega, and the funnel point for every slave shipped off the station.

It was a good day, just not for Harg.

**AA**

She always admired her brother, still regarded him as the epitome of human perfection even long after she had surpassed his meager accomplishments with impossible feats of brilliance. Akim, was his name, four years her elder and eighteen when he had been drafted into her small nation's army. She remembered first seeing Akim in uniform, a bright eyed young boy swelling with pride at the chance to at last be given the opportunity to serve his beloved homeland. She remembered the embellished tales of propaganda constantly drumming out the beat of her existence, filling her head with such empty lies that she only saw her brother as the conquering hero, a paragon triumphant who would soon return with sword and shield in hand.

She remembered when Akim first came back, two years later. She remembered that everlasting spark, omnipresent when he so frequently joked and laughed and danced with pretty girls, nonexistent in the cold grey eyes of this imposter who dared to take her hero's place. She remembered so naively demanding to know just how many he had killed, just how much glory he had brought to his family, just how good it felt to serve.

She remembered Akim snarling, a feral expression better suited on a feral dog, then striking her across the face. She remembered Akim revealing his bare chest to reveal the small white circle just above his heart. She remembered the long and meaningful speech her big brother had given her, of the horrors he'd seen. of the truths he'd faced, how time and time again he had been forced to reacquaint himself with just how easily the human body came apart.

But most of all, Akim stressed how much it hurt. To feel both a heavy blow and a pinpoint strike all at the same time, to feel nothing until so very much blood began to leak out. To feel the creeping cold as you began to realize that your life was ebbing away like sand falling between your fingers. She remembered hearing none of it, only feeling the stinging pain on her cheek, and calling her dearest big brother a coward.

Oh Akim, how very right you were.

All around Rebecca, there was only slaughter and its patron color, red. Bodies upon bodies upon bodies, friends and rivals and accomplices and complete unknowns strewn about like so much debris, their blood seeping together to form shallow lakes in the many hallways. Before, she could hear the screams echoing across the empty halls as the last survivors were hunted down and so heartlessly murdered. Now, it was only silent, and Rebecca wasn't sure whether to feel mortified or relieved.

How ironic, for a project like _this_ to wind up a massacre.

Oh Akim, it hurt so very much. She didn't feel much at first, just a slight stumble as if someone had shoved her, then a growing numbness in her chest. But then she looked back, and all everyone else was dead, and her shirt and her hands and just about everything seemed to be covered in _red_. Then she couldn't breath, and she couldn't run, and all Rebecca could do was slump against the blood-slicked wall and wait for the end to come. The medical part of her knew that she had been hit in the lung, which had probably collapsed at this point, and without proper medical attention she wouldn't have long.

Rebecca had been the one to suggest they make a run for it. They weren't quite sure what exactly was happening, only that it had something to do with the mechs. Some in the small group made of many scattered divisions proposed they wait for rescue. Rebecca argued that every cell was isolated, no one knew where they were, and if a cell with their level of security was compromised, it wouldn't be salvaged, only purged. She knew where they kept the evac shuttles, the hangar wasn't even that far, if they ran now they could still make it. The plan seemed so simple, so _easy_ that it seemed almost rehearsed. Then the mechs fell upon them, optic plates not red like the standard LOKI model, but shining a sickly gold...

Oh Akim...I can't...I _can't_...

Wheezing from so much blood in her lungs, Rebecca barely noticed a mech stride up to her, and somehow exuding an aura of malice around it. As it stared at her, she knew someone or something greater was behind it, sizing her up in her last moments and judging her to be unworthy.

And at last, it was time. No poignant final words, no desperate questions of _why, why, why?_ no final philosophical meanderings meant to eloquently summarize the entirety of her. Instead her breaths became more hurried, and she could no longer see...

A person's last thoughts can sometimes be the strangest. With her dying breath, Rebecca transcended the slaughterhouse around her, dropped the omnipresent pain like so much inconsequential luggage on a very long trip. Rebecca no longer cared about any of it. No, instead she hummed herself a lullaby from a time she thought long since forgotten.

_Numi, numi yaldati, _

_Numi, numi, nim. _

_Numi, numi k'tanati,* _

_Numi, numi, nim._

_Aba halach la'avoda - _

_Halach, halach Aba. _

_Yashuv im tzeit halevana - _

_Yavi lach matana!_

_Numi, numi..._

_Aba halach el hakramim - _

_Halach, halach Aba. _

_Yashuv im tzeit ha cochavim - _

_Yavi lach anavim!_

_Numi, numi..._

_Aba halach el hapardes - _

_Halach, halach Aba. _

_Yashuv ba'erev im haruach - _

_Yavi, yavi tapuach!_

_Numi, numi..._

_Aba halach el hasadeh - _

_Halach, halach Aba. _

_Yashuv ba'erev im tz'lalim - _

_Yavi lach shibolim..._

The mech stared on as the the human perished, assigning no more relevance to the event than the passage of one minute to the next. And a galaxy away, the mind behind the mech was left denied of its prize. It reached out to its true servants, the ones it wore as true extensions of its infinite will, while these primitive synthetics were a cheap mask easily discarded.

**The aberration has been taken. Find her.**


	20. False Gods: Read The Rules

**False Gods: Read The Rules**

_Two years ago._

At long last, Garrus had arrived at the old temple.

Unmarked on any map, isolated location unknown to any but an extremely select few, the temple's continued existence was considered one of the greatest insults to the governance of the Batarian Hegemony. They had, after all, forcibly declared that their state remain secular at all costs, and over the course of one hundred years did everything in their power to purge the batarian people of any and all evidence of the old gods. For this place to still remain standing for this long against such a paranoid and unrelenting foe was just short of miraculous. If a xenoarchaeologist could see this, they would weep bitter tears of joy.

Garrus was on the verge of weeping alright, just not tears of joy. Secret hidden wonder of the galaxy or not, this place was still damned hard to find. After trekking across miles upon miles upon miles of untamed wilderness, fending off the many savage creatures _in_ that untamed wilderness, almost starving to death due to the levo-based biology forcing him to rely on what scant few provisions he brought with him, and a thousand other unnamable horrors, it was safe to say he had endured the purest, most undiluted strain of misery ever experienced by a sapient mind. By the end of it, Garrus wasn't sure to feel relieved that his self-flagellation was over, despair that he had now well and truly lost it by deciding to embark on this idiotic mission in the nebulous pursuit of "justice", or gratitude should his brain finally grant his body the courtesy to die.

The temple was pretty though, suicidal sojourn aside, he had to give it that.

It was built in the style of Post-Classical giving way to the onset of the Second Enlightenment, angular and blocky, with the basic structure revolving around the shape of six hexagonal rings of diminishing size stacked on top of each other. A wide set of hundreds of steps ran from the base to the summit of the ziggurat, lined with colossal effigies each representing one of the thirty-three gods. But that wasn't what grabbed his attention.

Lining every wall were stone reliefs capturing the impossibly rich and vibrant story that was the batarian people. He could see two armies clashing in a war long since forgotten for mastery of the sun itself, two nameless lovers desperately reaching out to touch each other one last time, an old hermit kneeling down for prayer, so many disparate scenes of violence, vitality, hope, horror, the small insights that gave a sapient species its own unique identity. Most saw the batarians as belligerent brutes not unlike the krogan, a savage people content only to rip and rape and dominate the weak. If only the galaxy could see this...

"Beautiful, aren't they?"

Startled to hear another voice after so many weeks of isolation, Garrus spun around to the newcomer behind him. He turned to see a batarian, female by the looks of things. She appeared quite elderly, the ridges around her mouth beginning to sag, one of her upper eyes turned milky white. She wore a simple tunic and dirtied leather pants, giving her a rustic look which probably suggested her to be a gardener of some sort. A few feet away lay a discarded shovel next to a shallow hole. Quite odd for a batarian female to be seen walking around unaccompanied by a male, or wearing such masculine clothing, but then again, wasn't this place just a giant proverbial middle finger to the Hegemony's societal customs?

"The reliefs, yes?" She gave a kindly smile. "Truly magnificent. All of them were carved with flint knives by the blind monks of Lyriu over the course of two centuries to record the bata's service to the gods. It is a testament to their craftsmanship that even now, after a full life in service to this temple, these walls continue to astound me."

"How so?" asked Garrus, still trying wrap his head around such an oddity as a batarian appreciating both history and the fine arts. He wasn't a racist by any means, but after the long years in C-Sec and a brief stint of hunting slavers on Omega, Garrus had found some stereotypes existed for a reason.

The batarian adopted a wistful look, staring past him and to the walls behind. "Imagine the dedication it took to build such a wonder! Imagine picking up a sharpened stone, the most primitive instrument imaginable, and using it to create wonders the likes of which we have yet to match."

She cupped her palms together and whispered a quick prayer, a fatal offense in the Hegemony. "It is humbling to know that we, such pompous beings who claim mastery over the stars themselves, are still bested by blind old men scratching on walls."

"For while with his sword, one of the _bata_ may move one of the _bata_, with his faith, one of the _bata _may move the world." Garrus absentmindedly whispered, an old passage he believed long since forgotten.

The batarian turned to him with that same soft smile. "You have read of the _Wa'lin'gi'lamedi_." She did not phrase it as a question.

"Yes."

"Odd for an alien to take interest in a faith long dead. Might I ask what turned you to the Grey Word?"

Garrus briefly looked downward, then back up. "I wanted to fight for what's right, for justice, but to do that I first needed to know what that meant. I turned everywhere, books about law, science, religion, anything and everything that could give me some clue as to the actual definition of 'justice'."

"A worthy goal, one much vaunted in so many societies but largely ignored in the face of more tangible pursuits."

"Heh, yeah, that's one way to put it. 'Pointless' is another."

"A cause is lost only if believed so. Is yours?"

Garrus sighed, a melancholic sound that was an answer in itself. "I'll tell you when I find out."  
The gardener's smile persisted, and she somehow gave the impression that she expected that answer all along. "You seek Bersaad." Again, it wasn't a question. "You wish to learn from the last master of the_foi-ha_, to attain total control over mind, body, and spirit."

"Yes."

Now the batarian gave a gentle chuckle, at the absurdity of the notion. "No, I think not."

Well, that was unexpected. Garrus knitted his brow plates in confusion, "Excuse me?"

"Unfortunately, Bersaad does not train your kind. It is a waste of his time and talents, and ultimately benefits no one."

Did he hear that correctly? "And just who does he train? Only those of the _bata_?"

The presumed gardener scowled, as if it were the stupidest question he could ever ask. "Why, the living of course! Why should he devote so much time and energy imparting the greatest gift of the gods to a corpse? That would be absurd!"

Okay...so maybe she wasn't as all there as Garrus presumably thought. Then the gardener clasped Garrus by the shoulders, giving another hearty bellow as if devising the latest and greatest in a series of jokes only she could understand. "But it is obvious you did not come for such an idiotic purpose, even if you yourself don't know it. No, I know whom you really seek, someone who can truly help you on your path."

Now the turian was at a total loss. "Uh...who exactly?"

"Why, me of course!"

"B-but you're just the gardener! What the hell are you talking about?"

Still laughing, the batarian joyously answered, "I am not a gardener. I am, in fact, the gravedigger, ha ha!"

Suddenly, her smile didn't seem so sweet. "And you are looking for me because two hours ago, I killed you. Specifically, with an extremely potent neurotoxin just now beginning to shut down your lungs." Still smiling, she didn't seem to acknowledge Garrus' shell shocked expression.

The gravedigger walked back over to her shovel and her shallow hole. "Now come, help me dig your grave!"

**AA**

_Present day._

He wakes up after exactly three hours and thirty minutes of chemically-induced sleep, a welcome release from the nightly horrors his subconscious forces him to endure. Then, sanitation, as he stands in the stall and runs a basic decontamination protocol. Anyone else might consider hygiene a minor point of concern, but Omega is a veritable breeding ground of new and lethal diseases.

And even if it was redundant, it was still part of the routine, the first step in a cycle that he had become increasingly reliant on to preserve his sanity and focus. After so much pain, so much loss, even having his very consciousness split in two, his morning routine was one of the few fixtures in his life, a small foundation of order in the tumultuous chaos in which he had imposed himself.  
Then he gets dressed, just a light layer of underarmor to start the day. Perhaps it leaves him vulnerable, perhaps sleeping in his armor is no more uncomfortable than his spartan bed, but he still allows himself that small personal comfort. Knowing that he has to don the armor, that it is a separate entity and not the totality of his existence, helps him to remember where Garrus ends and the Archangel begin. So yes, the armor comes later.

Once dressed, he takes the same seventeen steps from his room to the main chamber. And he is always greeted in the same fashion, as if they too know the importance of the routine. Along the way he eats a small turian MRE, devoid of taste or texture and but consisting of the exact requirement of sustenance necessary for him to function for the day.

Glyph floats down and informs him of the thousands the small drone has compiled and organized in the wake of his last successful operation. Cipher then sorts them by order of relevance, whereas the whole while Rune silently readies the Hawk and tends to his equipment.  
Now, came the armor. Boots, leggings, chest, gauntlets, and lastly, helmet. With a low _hiss_ the many disparate elements seal together to become one whole, and the world expands. His vision is filled with so many numbers and figures, the perceivable world rendered into concrete code. A hum extends from his armor as the holo-emitters come online, and soon he is shrouded in blessed shadow.

Today would be wholly unique, and paradoxically the same as always. New faces would be taught to hurt, new victims would be taught to fear, just like always he would venture out to spread his unsung creed. Each fight, assault, and ambush all with their own impossibly unique nuances and complications, each an entirely new experience, but as time passed it all blended together into one discordant whirlwind of pain and punishment.

Perhaps, he mused, it was all just part of a routine.

Yesterday, he had shifted the balance of power on Omega, had scattered enough pieces and players to make a discernable impact, however brief. Today would be different, and the same as always.

The Sepulcher had been found, and true or not, each and every player was moving to seize the bounty for their own. If he played this right, he could enough damage to make the attack on the _Seventh Sin_seem about as threatening as a hanar light show. That was the game of course, to be the unseen blade that strikes at the unseen places.

At last, the Archangel was ready.

**AA**

"Mr. Taylor?"

"Yes sir?"

"Am I correct in assuming you are responsible for one of the largest intelligence leaks in this organization's history?"

"Yes sir."

"Care to elaborate?"

The smoking man's face remained impassive on the vid screen, his voice not even betraying the expected note of disapproval. The Illusive Man knew they had done it and knew it was the best course of action, now he only needed to know _why_. It made it easier to alter future plans.  
Jacob heard a door open and close behind him, and the sound of high-heeled boots tapping on the metal floor. He casually leaned back and allowed Miranda to step in, believing this to be more her area of expertise. After all, Jacob just shot things.

Two immaculate faces, one slightly more weathered than the other, stared each other down. They were preparing to hold another one of the million arguments that would inevitably fall in Miranda's favor, but ultimately play into the Man's ultimate long-term game.

She spoke first, as she always did. "For all we know sir, our enemy is a complete unknown here, including their extent of intelligence. They could know everything or nothing at all, although the former is significantly likelier."

The Man took a long drag from his omnipresent cigarette. Jacob wondered if it was real, a visible vise openly displayed by someone who revealed nothing, or just another prop meant to lend credence to the illusion. It just seemed so strange for the Man to leave such an obvious clue that he was indeed a smoker, a tidbit that some Alliance shrink would probably pleasure himself to.  
"You are drawing them out by creating a spectacle. Understandable, if not a bit reckless."

Miranda gave him a look. "Given our situation and resources, I would say it's our best viable option."

"And should you fail? You do know what's at risk here."

Jacob had worked long enough with the so-called "Ice Queen" to notice the minuscule signs that she was positively outraged. Nostrils slightly flared, fingers curled inward in a half-formed fist, yeah, calling her abilities into question did usually enrage her. Probably why Wilson did it so often, the bastard.

"I won't."

Deeming that answer sufficient, the Illusive Man sipped from a nearby glass of what Jacob guessed had to be bourbon. "See that you don't." He then motioned a hand, and cut the vid feed.

Miranda now turned to Jacob, still seated in the office chair and quite possibly the closest thing to an ally she could ever have in this galaxy. "Ready?"

He leaned down and scooped his Scimitar off the ground. He checked the sights, then the shots left in the sink, before giving a resolute nod. "You know it."

And behind them, the warrior dreamt of a long lost dream.


	21. False Gods: Set Up The Pieces

**False Gods: Set Up The Pieces**

_2 years ago._

After enduring so many hardships, after willingly exposing himself to levels of pain he never thought possible, it was only natural that Garrus began to think of how he would die.

He knew he would go out with bang, that was for sure. Anything else wouldn't be a fitting final chapter to the short tragedy that was his life. He envisioned battle and blood and a final sacrifice for the nebulous notion of a greater good, an end worthy of a proper martyr that would at last grant him a well-deserved rest.

Getting taken out by a senile gardener just a prayer short of a spirit seemed...insulting. Absurd even. Worse, Wrex would never let him live it down.

Yet despite his mental objections, she continued digging, and he continued dying.

Already Garrus could sense the signs. After being pushed to the very brink of morality and then dragged back again, he knew when his body was reaching its limits. His lungs were burning, his core body temperature was rising, and it his vision was slowly flickering in and out of focus. He could have sworn he heard some kind of low whine, although that could be an early onset of delusion.

Of course, he had questions, and spirits damn him he was at least going to get some answers before he dropped dead. There were a thousand ways she could have done it. In his sleep, through his limited supply of food and water, even in the seemingly thousands of small cuts and scrapes accrued through his long trek through the wilderness. It was not a question of how, but instead...

Throat raw, Garrus at last spoke. "Why?"

The gravedigger continued unabated, any sign of mirth or joviality on her face wiped clean. Perhaps she finally decided to drop the charade. Perhaps even her deranged mind knew to show a man respect as you watched his life slowly drain away. Regardless, she set upon her task with a grim finality that chilled Garrus to the core.

Her pace was steady, shovelfuls of dirt rising and falling out of the ever deepening hole. As she dug, each strike against the hard earth began to sound like hammer blows to Garrus' fevered mind.

For a few seconds, there was only the sound of a woman hard at work. At last, she murmured, "Why not?"

Garrus extended the olive branch first, like Shepard taught him. However tempted he might be to smash this crazy old bat with her own shovel and bury her alive, he needed to maintain his composure if he was going to get anywhere. "You've clearly been following me for days, so you know why I've come. You know I'm no threat to you or your master."

Dig, dump. Dig, dump. The gravedigger briefly paused to wipe the collected sweat off her brow. Perspiration, another biological quirk shared by both batarians and humanity. "Painfully so.", she retorted.

"Then _why_? I should think I at least deserve to know."

Her pace did not slow, but Garrus swore he could make out a miniscule scowl forming on her brow. "Because you are _weak,_ and the _foi-ha_ demands strength."

The gravedigger stopped to briefly look at him. " For you to train under Bersaad is as sure a death as the poison pulsing through your veins. Believe me when I say that killing you is a courtesy, a far less painful end then were you to try and continue this foolish endeavor."

He wouldn't accept that, not after all he had endured. There had to be a far baser reason, there always was. "Is it because I'm an alien? Outsiders not welcome here, and all that crap? Can only the _bata_ master the Ninefold Path?"

Still, she continued to dig, not even bothering to look at him while answering.. "Of course not!" The gravedigger's voice rose. "Are you truly so dense? No, your fault is not so easily blamed on circumstances outside your control. Regardless if you were turian, _bata_, slave, noble, warrior, criminal, convert, or even the Grey God Wy'lahi's discarded left testicle, I would have killed you all the same! Your weakness is not the irrelevancy of _birth_, but of _character_."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

The gravedigger calmed somewhat, but she glared with barely restrained fury. "You quote scripture as if by just simply reading the holy words, you gain the slightest bit of insight. You have walked to these temple steps as if that alone gives you the right to demand tutelage."

Dig. Dig. Dig. "But worst of all, _turian_, you see the _foi-ha_, the ultimate expression of perfect equilibrium between every god both above and below, as a simple _tool_." Dig. Dig. Dig. "Like so many others, you see the Path as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.."

Slowly, Garrus could feel his heartbeats quickening. He was also getting slightly dizzy. That probably wasn't good. "I was told the _foi-ha_ was a long lost batarian martial art practiced by only one living soul. Are you really going to kill me for being _ignorant_?"

"I have dug the graves of others greater than you for lesser sins."

Garrus shook his head in frustration. "You're dodging the question. Of course I'm ignorant, or else I wouldn't have come here to learn. Why is that so wrong?"

The gravedigger settled, speaking slowly as if she were lecturing a child. ."If I let you walk up the temple steps to meet the last master of the _foi-ha_, to learn the infinite secrets of the Way, what do you think would happen?"

"I would-"

He was silenced by the gravedigger burying her shovel into the dirt and climbing up out of the hole. She looked to face him and gave him a stare that could freeze a krogan cold. "I can see it, _turian_. You are not easily deterred. You would endure the many trials, you would weather the harshest punishments, you would give everything you are to become one with spirit and self."

She snarled in disdain. "And still, it would not be enough. Still, you would fail. Still, you would die. Make no mistake turian, learning the _foi-ha_ demands more than you could ever give."

Garrus still didn't understand, perhaps he never would. After all, it became harder to think as it became harder to breathe. "You...said it..." He could barely speak, gasping every other word. "...yourself, I won't...give up.

She then harshly poked him in the chest, just above his heart. "You do not lack in determination, _turian_. What you lack is conviction!"

The gravedigger, in a motion that seemed almost invisible to the naked eye, then struck Garrus like an oncoming dreadnought. He was driven down to his knees, gasping for air at the unexpected assault.

His lungs were on fire at this point. The simple act of respiration soon became a titanic effort. The gravedigger looked at his sickened husk of a body, yet didn't seem to care. "Your spine lacks steel!" She roared in his face. "Your eyes lack spark! You lack purpose!"

Struggling to his feet, Garrus wheezed, "I know my purpose. I seek just-"

This time the gravedigger kicked out his legs, then ground his face into the dirt with her heel. By the spirits, he had trained under a justicar! He knew how to take a hit! Why did this grimy old batarian somehow punch harder than an oncoming skycar collision?

The gravedigger looked down at him with disdain. "Justice? Ha!" She gave a mirthless chuckle. "To seek justice is as nebulous a cause as to seek truth, the meaning of life, as arbitrary as going out to seek food to eat and water to drink! That is not a cause, but an _excuse_."

She stepped back and allowed Garrus to crawl back up again. "You may believe you _have_ a cause, but that does not _give_ you a cause. You want to believe in something pretty to hear, hoping they will sing such gallant songs of you, so you pursue it hoping only that faith will come later!"

Tired of seeing him scrabbling in the dirt, the gravedigger hauled Garrus up to her eye level. "Tell me now, turian, before I leave you here to suffocate on the temple doorstep! Convince me that I was mistaken, and your wretched excuse for a life is somehow worth sparing! What do you fight for? What do you believe in? Why do you seek Bersaad?!"

Garrus gave the only answer he could ever give. "For justice."

At that, the gravekeeper grew quiet. For a few long seconds, she seemed deep in contemplation, over what Garrus couldn't say. Finally though, the gravekeeper snarled, then drew back her fist...

Then darkness.

**AA**

_Present day._

He first heard about it through the traditional channels. Overheard snippets of conversation between bored guards, vague mentions in stolen reports and intercepted messages, insignificant details gathered while roaming the streets that slowly spooled together to form a cohesive whole. While he couldn't pinpoint exactly when, just as with the Phobos, soon Archangel knew that his next target was none other than the Sepulcher.

He had no idea what it was, only that every major merc group and more wanted it for themselves. Through Glyph, Garrus discovered the Sepulcher to be the codename of some item highly valued by the Shadow Broker, who had then discreetly offered an almost unheard of amount of credits to the merc leader that brought it to him. It had traded hands throughout the underworld for the better part of six months, before vanishing without a trace.

But not anymore. After an anonymous source had revealed to Aria that the Sepulcher had not only been found, but was now on the station, it wasn't long after that everyone began the mad scramble to at last claim the gilded trophy. After all, whoever earned a favor from the Broker could go a long way indeed. The only thing no one knew was what exactly the Sepulcher was, only that it was contained in a nigh-impregnable stasis pod.

Garrus knew that the Sepulcher had been discreetly smuggled into the ports on Nalli District by parties unknown, and was currently being moved to a waiting frigate in Doru.

Unfortunately, so did every other merc on Omega.

Taking down the Phobos had removed an unseen enemy with a surprising amount of pull from Omega's constantly shifting power struggle. Blowing up the _Seventh Sin_ had crippled the slavers for a few weeks, shattering them into smaller parts all the easier to take down. But this, snatching the currently most highly prized item on Omega from right under the noses of the Big Three while they fought a small-scale war? Garrus just couldn't resist.

"Forty seconds."

He sat atop a factory rooftop. From high above, Garrus could see the scattered residents milling about on the streets below, as always ignorant of the oncoming violence. Or perhaps they simply didn't care, so used to the endless anarchic whirlwind of violence and...

And...

...Crime? No, that didn't work, that tied in with the violence. Well...shit, he had nothing.

"Thirty seconds." intoned Cypher, deriving his estimates from predictive models constructed by Glyph.

Garrus could just now see the shuttle flying into view, a Kodiak with colors of white and gold. It carried a strange emblem that he didn't recognize, some kind of elongated diamond framed by two angular lines. The craft had clearly seen better days. The paint had faded, the thrusters were misfiring at random intervals, and a rushed patch job had clearly been performed on the frontal hull.

And yet the weathered Kodiak flew across the street at a breakneck speed, the pilot clearly aware that he had a galaxy-sized bullseye painted on his back. Rockets then flew from hidden balconies dotting the street, a full barrage launched by overeager mercs that threatened to destroy the shuttle and the invaluable cargo it contained. Archangel could hear screams from the residents below as their neighborhood was quickly converted into a warzone.

"Twenty seconds."

Fortunately for them, the pilot compensated for the mercs' stupidity. With expert grace for such an awkward vessel, the Kodiak dodged and weaved between the many missiles, and although a few glanced off its kinetic barriers, the Kodiak managed to cross the killzone relatively unscathed. If only they knew what lay ahead.

"Ten seconds."

As if bolstered by surviving the initial onslaught, the shuttle put on another burst of speed in a mad dash to escape the ambush. It steadily rose to leave Nalli and to salvation, and the Archangel observed as the Kodiak reached the twin spires guarding the district exit and into the transit lanes beyond, a silent witness to its mad dash for freedom.

"Five."

Time to get ready. Archangel marked the potential location of each missile launcher on his HUD, then switched to thermal vision to track any movement.

"Four."

Just another night on the job.

"Three."

Garrus did not believe in spirits, but that didn't mean the Archangel didn't commune with them. At the onset of every hunt, the faceless warrior would beseech one in particular.

"Two."

Turians did not speak to spirits for their intercession, but rather for their inspiration. A painter seeking a muse might converse with the spirit of the rolling hills of his childhood home. A soldier questioning his loyalty might appeal to the spirit of his city, to remind himself what he fought for.

But when the Archangel spoke to the beings above, he did not ask for guidance. He did not ask for aid in this necessary task. Rather, the Archangel did what he did best, and gave a simple warning to whatever dark spectres haunted this place and gave such monsters their power.

"One."

The Archangel, the Good Ghost of Gozu, the living shadow and the unseen avatar of order, repeated his silent mantra. No one could guess the words.

He was ready.

"Mark."

As the Kodiak reached the twin spires, it then took a sharp turn downward as if swatted by the invisible hand of an angry god. Unable to stabilize, it spiraled before striking an overhanging bridge, then careening downward into the underscape below.

Archangel sighed as he looked at the sudden scene of destruction. The Kodiak was never meant to be downed by the initial missile barrage, that was only meant to goad it into the real trap. Set up by the Blood Pack, dozens of invisible nanocarbon wires had been strung up between the two towers to form an impenetrable net. Capable of absorbing the force of even an oncoming shuttle craft, they ensured the Kodiak made a clean crash without much risk of harming the Sepulcher.

Movement began to register on his HUD again, as the predators saw that their snare had been flawlessly sprung. Already Archangel could see krogan and vorcha advancing on the downed shuttle, like carrion feeders descending upon a fresh kill. At the forefront was one of the largest krogan Archangel had ever seen, bedecked in armor that seemed more fitting on a tank. Behind them and on nearby rooftops, Eclipse infiltrators lined up kill shots while mechs unfurled on the streets below, a spindly salarian seen directing them. The Suns didn't even bother hiding, they just took up positions at the opposite end of the crash sight and dug in for the ensuing firefight, while from a raised platform a scarred batarian roared orders to his underlings below.

For a long few seconds, no one moved a muscle. It was the inhale before the plunge into icy waters as three armies waited for someone to make the first move.

Archangel obliged them.

**AA**


	22. False Gods: Play The Game

**False Gods: Play the Game**

_2 years ago_.

"I...I'm alive?"

"Yes."

"W-why?"

"To answer a question."

**AA**

_Present day_.

It began, like all things on Omega, with a bang.

Light and dust and sound erupted in all places at once, and suddenly the tinder was struck with the necessary spark. And almost immediately, the street was consumed by a hurricane of bullets and blood, as the three armies finally clashed. Gunfire streamed from all sides, brilliant flashes of blue and orange streaking across the darkened streets. Explosives were brought to bear in opening salvos of ordinance that seemed more suitable when dreadnoughts clashed, great craters blasted into the twisted metal as yet another piece of Omega was quickly converted into an impromptu warzone.

There was no limit to what each faction was willing to unleash, nothing they wouldn't be willing to sacrifice. The Sepulcher was a new piece in a game that stagnated centuries ago. It could change everything, and was worth burning down the street, the district, even half the damn station. After all, the last time a catalyst like this had introduced, Patriarch's reign was toppled and Aria assumed dominance.

As soon as it began, the artillery exchange ended before the shuttle and its cargo could be damaged. Innumerable rocket contrails still lingered, and the air was thick with the taste of copper. When the missiles stop flying, the battle began.

First came the freelancers, the first to fight and the first to die. Although they were only meant to serve as the first meat to bloody the grinder, such a high potential reward still managed to attract all manner of degenerates to stupid even for the mercs. Small street gangs with barely a gun between the eight of them, ex-convicts desperate for something to kill, military washouts still enamoured with the romanticized idea of becoming the bloody-handed king of the Terminus with nothing but a gun and a pile of credits, the detritus of the detritus were drawn to this mass suicide like maggots to a fresh corpse.

Any semblance of order or loyalty died as soon as the first bullets let fly. Freelancers were, by definition, opportunists, and so were just as willing to turn on their employers and each other as their supposed enemy. What became a firefight became a free-for-all, and as numbers and ammunition thinned it devolved into a brawl, and soon after it was little more than mewling cowards bleeding out in the dirt.

An hour passed, then it began again.

Then came the professionals, who had only managed to stay neutral by claiming the hard earned title of deadliest on Omega. They were sent as the second wave, their potential wasted, yet they went out to die regardless. There were better odds in trying to take the Sepulcher for yourself then reneging on a job and losing what scant reputation you had managed to scrape together.

But why were these legends among men, who could turn an entire battle in their favor, so easily tossed aside? Simple, there was no group more reviled or detested on Omega than the freelancers. The vorcha didn't count, they were just beasts.

This fight was far more elegant than the preceding slaughter, as dozens of Omega's deadliest squared off against one another. Careers were won and lost in the span of minutes, some rising to unthought of levels of prestige only to die before even realizing it. Jorgal Tur, who wore seventeen skulls on his armor, managed to pulverise the cybernetic abomination Overtkill with one blow of his colossal hammer, only to have his skull disintegrate from a Widow round fired by the legendary child sniper known as K. The fallen justicar Abyssa atomized the blind psychopath Slice Dice, then fell over dead as the turian Brutus impaled her with his signature omni-spear. The Red Menace managed to plant a sticky grenade on Mindtrip, the drell illusionist, before having his stomach torn out by one of the smiling Dagger Twins.

It was perhaps the greatest battle Omega had seen for a very long time. It was also short, burning itself out like a self contained wildfire. Within an hour, the street was silent again, corpses everywhere as their blood pooled and mingled to form that unholy shade of brown. Not even Omega was accustomed to such carnage.

And the main event hadn't even begun.

**AA**

Dropping down on an Eclipse fireteam perched on the roof of an apartment complex, he knows he has the advantage at close range. Unable to bring their snipers to bear on such a near target, each salarian was forced to switch to his sidearm, one second of a delay that already seals their fate.

The Archangel throws down a smoke bomb then lands on the nearest target, his body weight smashing the merc to the floor. He wraps his body around the right leg and then leans to the right, producing an audible snap. Salarians are not nearly as durable as other Citadel races, and so the shock from a broken leg drives the sniper unconscious. The Archangel tackles another, smashing the next victim's head so hard against the floor that the faceplate shatters and green viscous fluid leaks onto the tiling.

Another has his legs kicked out from under him, and takes a full neural shock to his upper forehead. A pair switch their visors to infrared, but see nothing but their own comrades in the dull haze. They continue to see nothing, until a small diamond of white outlined by a large cloud of dark blue rushes toward them. They fire at will, two small muzzle flashes in the smoke that, one after another, fall silent.

There are two left, and one has managed to reach his pistol and is close enough to make out his assailant in the smoke. The small salarian draws...and the Archangel moves.

It takes two tenths of a second for a Predator to unfurl. The mercenary is down in half that, falling to the floor and writhing in pain with a small dart embedded in his shoulder, and soon the paralytic toxins coating the blade will take effect.

One remains.

A sniper believes himself above the battle, the omniscient eye looking down. For something to take them unawares deeply unsettles any marksmen, especially when said something drops from the skies and picks off your team one by one. And this one is no different. The Archangel can see the signs, his helmet picking up an elevated heart rate, movements becoming increasingly erratic,

The Archangel calmly walks over and breaks the final merc's brittle arm, the salarian's shrill screams of pain soon devolving into obscenities silently muttered between clenched teeth as the medigel sets in.

For a long moment, the Archangel stares at the mercenary. His mask, four orbs of burning green suspended in an infinite void, hides why.

"Tell them." the Archangel whispers, with a voice like smoke and a tone like a blade freshly pressed to the grindstone.

A shadow passes...

He is gone.

**AA**

Once again, Tarak had saved the day. And once again, no one was listening to him.

The plan of attack had fallen apart almost immediately after the freelancers finished killing each other. First, Vosque had disappeared as soon as the bombs went off, leaving his men still scratching their heads in confusion even as the Eclipse snipers had gone to work on them. Then, Orsk had taken his unit, meant to flank the Pack to the south, and led them into a blind charge like the batarian slaver lords of old. After that, with the center exposed to Eclipse snipers and Pack ordinance, it was only a matter of time before their position collapsed.

This wasn't the first time an op had turned into a total clusterfuck, at least not since Cirn took over. Luckily, Tarak was there to pick up the pieces..

After ordering his squads to dig into whatever scant cover was available, Tarak had finally managed to set up a reasonably defensible position. From there, he positioned several heavy turrets around the raised outcroppings dotting the crash site, thereby converting the ninety meters surrounding the downed shuttle into a killzone. True, his men were still exposed to overhead sniper fire, but for some reason that had somehow abated, and now his contingent of Suns could peek out of cover without getting their damn heads blown off. But now his men could grab the Sepulcher, and shred anyone who dared come close.

In the distance, Tarak could see the ensuing three-way firefight, quickly devolving into a melee brawl, which he had taken special care to stay well away from. There were krogan down there after all, they were strongest in close combat, and to try to match that was just crazy. It had been Orsk's damn fool idea though, at least he would get the blame for expending quite a few men in a suicidal offensive. It brought a smile to Tarak's face knowing that if the Blood Pack didn't tear the idiot apart, then Cirn would be sure to flay him alive.

Although, it was mostly Cirn's fault that an idiot like Orsk had even been given his own command, and that rankled Tarak immensely. Even in the Suns, it seemed caste and clan still pulled a hell of alot more weight than personal merit.

"And Carver?"

Speaking of which...

Tarak turned back to the holo-table, currently displaying the known locations of each faction's forces. In the center, a large mass of red, blue, and a small smattering of yellow could be seen, although red was quickly overtaking the other colors. Behind, three solid walls of blue, the Sun fortifications, were circling the golden square that was the shuttle. On the opposite end of the map were pinpoints of yellow, known Eclipse sniper teams.

Tanux idly flicked a spot of dirt off his mandible. "Dead. Vorcha overran his position. His unit's probably already scattered into the district."

"Doesn't surprise me." Tarak snorted. "Everyone in D Company thinks they're such hot shit, and Carver especially. They're also the first to piss themselves dizzy as soon as they see some real Omegan action. Dumbass should have followed orders and fallen back when he had the chance."

"Good riddance. Little bastard always was too smart for his own good." Vosque added with a dismissive roll of his eyes. "Carver was probably the one who convinced Orsk to make his little suicide run, just so he could take Orsk's place after his commanding officer's head was mounted on a krogan pike."

Tarak narrowed all four eyes. "Like you should talk. Where in Aria's blue ass-crack were you when the pissplates started picking off our guys?"

"Fuck you sq-asshole!" Vosque immediately retracted the racial slur as soon as he realized who else was in the room. "Not my fault I got jumped by some kind of goddamn _ninja_. I was lucky to make it back alive!"

"I've had enough of your bullshit, Vosque. Just have the balls to say you choked and-"

Tanux interrupted Tarak's tirade with a raised hand, and that rankled the batarian to no end. Oh, if Tarak hated Vosque, then he _despised_ Tanux. He had been with the Suns for twelve years, mostly on Omegan rotations, had climbed up to command an entire Suns company, yet Cirn still barely ever listened to him. Then some uppity little turian _fuck_ just shows up and in just four months has Cirn lapping up his every word. But not only that, but then Tanux always acted like he were somehow _better_ than Tarak, talked down to him like a teacher would talk to a slow child.

Soon, that would change, but for now Tarak needed to be patient. Tarak barely restrained a fiery retort directed at the turian, and merely lapsed into brooding silence.

Tanux turned to Vosque. "Ninja, you said. By that, I assume you mean that your assailant resembled the human warriors of antiquity."

Vosque looked puzzled. "Y-yeah."

"What did he look like?"

"Tall, dark, moved faster than a vorcha on crack."

"About seven feet in height? Wore some kind of black cape and helmet combo?"

"Yeah!"

Tanux now looked back at Cirn, who raised an eyeridge. "It could be him."

"Could be." Cirn said. "We sure it's just not another freelancer who managed to last this long?"

The turian shrugged, his face still an impassive mask. "No known freelancer on Omega matches the description. And we know he hasn't taken any jobs with anyone."

"That we know of. Doesn't mean the bastard's not working for someone."

"True."

Now completely out of his depth, Tarak incredulously looked from Tanux to Cirn. "Would someone tell me what this is about?"

Again, Tanux gave that dismissive hand wave that gave Tarak daydreams of snapping that smug little turian's neck like a dry bone. "Nothing you should worry about. Just a small problem that could get complicated if we leave it unattended. It has nothing to do with this current op."

"Why would he come here though?" asked Cirn. "This isn't anywhere near any of the sightings. You think he's after the Sepulcher?"

Tanux briefly rubbed a mandible. "Possibly, I can't say for sure though. He could also be here just to sabotage us, as he's done in the past. After all, we do have a lot to lose here."

"Think he'll be a problem?"

"No. He's never tried anything on this scale before, we have enough men and firepower to make this position impregnable, and the situation is far too volatile for any sane infiltration specialist to approach. But we should still-"

Now Tanux was interrupted, and Tarak was knocked out of his increasingly angered state at being kept out of the loop, by an incoming message to Tanux's comm. He put it on speaker for all to hear.

Tarak could hear a human, probably one of theirs, wheezing and panting for a few moments before quieting down. From the series of rasping breaths, Tarak guessed that the man was wounded.

"...line is broken." The signal was spotty, with static drowning out much of the audio. "We tried to stop them...him. But...all dead."

This boy didn't sound like a commanding officer. How the hell had he gotten a direct comm address to one of the Suns' leading men?

"Name and rank, soldier." Tanux demanded. "You sound injured. What's your situation?"

Whoever was on the other end didn't seem to hear. "Not Pack...not Eclipse." the boy gasped. "Red with blood, not yellow, but _gold_. We didn't...we don't...stand a chance."

"Where are you?"

"It's coming..."

"It's COMING!"

Brief signs of a struggle could be heard, and the soldier's breathing quickened, then an indecipherable shriek of raw terror. Tarak heard several gunshots before another strangled scream, and then a low roar, like the unholy union between the galaxy's loudest static and a billion flies buzzing.

Then the line went dead.

Vosque nervously looked to Tanux, clearly expecting him to have some kind of answer. "What the hell was that all about-"

Suddenly, a voice boomed out, so loud and so deep that it almost seemed to shake Tarak down to his very bones. It was a sound that seemed to go beyond _sound_, and Tarak was comprehending just the barest fraction of it. It was as if a black hole could speak, and deemed him unworthy.

**YOU CANNOT RESIST. **

Cirn's eyes widened in alarm, and quickly began roaring new orders into his comm. Tanux pulled out a datapad, eyes still as calm as ever, and began typing in long strings of text. Vosque merely stared. Tarak spun out of the tent to return to the frontline. The time for talk had ended, as each commander dealt with this new complication in their own way.

Because somehow a very large portion of blue, over forty percent of the Sun's defensive fortifications and the majority of the men guarding the approach to the crash site and the Sepulcher, had vanished in the blink of an eye.

**AA**

The Archangel smashed the rifle up, forcing the merc to fire up in pure reflex. His comrade readied a Concussive Shot, probably relying on the Shot's innate tracking tech over manual aim. A sound principle, if the Sun was fighting almost anyone else. The vigilante flipped over his current target, interposing the hapless batarian between him and the projectile. It slammed the batarian into the wall, but the Archangel had already vanished.

Once again, the Archangel had broken all the rules.

Since first contact with humanity, and then later following the development of heat sinks, weapons had evolved exponentially over the past decade. Defensive tech however, advances in armor, barriers, and such, had always been more of a reactionary industry, matching the current level of firearms only long after they had become widespread. Thus, having always slightly lagged behind, armor manufacturers such as Devlon Industries and Gateway Personal Defense now found themselves light years behind their counterparts, and would still take years to catch up. As new lines of firearms began circulate around the galaxy, armor systems remained the same, and to their dismay most Omegan mercs soon found that their standard kinetic barriers and hardshell suits provided about as much protection from a new Revenant rifle as a varren-chewed condom.

So new tactics had been adopted by most organized military outfits: play conservatively. Mobility was no longer the name of the game, but rather waiting your opponent out and blasting him as soon as he popped his head out of cover. That, combined with the holdover popular policy of filling the air with as many bullets as possible over actual marksmanship, spawned from the days of infinite ammunition, led to a mass preference towards the human adage that "the best defense is a good offense".

Most mercs had unknowingly trained themselves to expect the traditional style of combat, the unspoken lines of etiquette that had two groups slowly shuffling between several rows of chest high walls, hiding behind cover and emerging only to plink away whenever the enemy exposed the smallest square inch. It made them rigid, predictable, limited their mobility to the point that it was like hunting a mentally deficient group of obese volus. There were exceptions of course, like the krogan, but that was only when the blood rage overtook any and all rational parts of their crude minds.

The Archangel darted between pillar to pillar, shadow to shadow, moving so quickly and striking so suddenly that tracking his movement soon proved impossible. He was seemingly everywhere the light was not, hiding in every shadow and breathing down every sweating neck. He was every idle sound echoing off the alley's high walls, lurking in the silence when the nearby firefights would briefly abate. Three Suns circled around, keeping closely together, two already having stripped off their helmets to desperately wipe their brows.

They muttered half-hearted rationales in some desperate attempt to gain control over the situation. It _must_ be a freelancer, they agreed, some crazed psychopath who had been let loose to sow havoc behind the Sun lines. It couldn't have possibly been that...thing the homeless madmen of the Underscape whispered could pop a man's head off like an egg with its bare hands, what the junkies and whores of Gozu claim fought something called the Phobos, a creature that gave even Aria pause, and then feasted on the fearbeast's fetid heart. Yeah...the stories couldn't possibly be _true_.

How very wrong they were.

The dark shape burst out of nowhere, seemingly melting out of the wall, to snatch the closest comatose merc. He spun once, and with that momentum, tossed the body at its comrades with the strength of an elcor. Two men buckled under the assault, and the last was dispatched by his gun coincidentally choosing that exact moment to explode in his face.

Twelve men this time, and the seventh (or eighth, he was still a bit fuzzy if those vorcha had been fighting with or against the krogan). Slowly, the Archangel was beginning to secure the immediate crash site, while also keeping the mercs busy shooting at him as opposed to just snatching the Sepulcher outright.

The Archangel turned away from the bodies to face the gunmetal gray barrel of a Scimitar shotgun, wielded by a rather irate looking human male. Dark skinned and barrel chested, he was clearly a soldier, with far better training and expertise than anything the mercs had to offer. The human wasn't wearing any recognizable merc outfit, and the small symbol on his chest also drew a blank.

To noticeable effect, the human cocked the shotgun once. If he had seen the Archangel in action, then he probably knew it would have little effect. Still, it was understandable that he would want to project confidence.

No one moved a muscle for what seemed like an eternity. It was probably a good sign that the human probably hadn't opened fire on sight, but still, it paid to be cautious.

Then, stepping into the alley, the male was joined by another human, this time a female. Fair skinned this time, with long ebony hair, she wore a white form-fitting catsuit that seemed more suited to infiltration than direct combat. The Archangel could also see a small pistol, a Shurikan, clipped to her right thigh.

His HUD's scans came back with two amps detected, signifying both to be biotic. They were probably part of the team initially carrying the Sepulcher, only just now finding a sufficient lull in the fighting to venture out to scavenge arms and ammunition.

Now seeking to break the ice, as well as test just how far these two were willing to trust him, the Archangel stepped forward. The human male brought his gun to eye level, and briefly flared a shimmering blue.

At last, the male spoke. "Don't test me merc," he said, "one more step and I turn your head into a canoe, you hear me?"

Good, they wanted to talk. Best get started. "You're welcome," the Archangel dryly replied.

"Didn't ask for your help," the human muttered.

"All the same, you needed it," the Archangel said, "If I hadn't stopped them, these idiots would have come up on your rear while the Pack was still occupying you. That could have complicated things."

"I'll say again, we didn't ask for your help." His eyes narrowed. "We've g for the situation well in hand, and we don't need some _maniac_ swooping in and-"

Surprisingly, the female interrupted him. For a moment, her partner seemed put off, then lapsed back into quiet neutrality. She spoke with a cultured accent, yet a tone that screamed _professional_. She was used to such situations. "At ease, Jacob." She said. Good, at least now the face had a name. "It's obvious he just wants to talk."

Jacob snorted, as if the very idea that this thing somehow wasn't out to kill them like all the rest. "Doesn't change that he's no different than all the rest," he gave the newcomer a dark look, "After all Miranda, we are on _Omega. _How do we know he's not just distracting us while his buddies move into position?"

"What position could possibly provide an advantage at this point?" Miranda said, "The battle has stagnated, and they've gone back to dig their trenches. For now, the mercenaries will be too busy killing each other to remember us."

The Archangel spread his hands wide. "She's right," he said, "They know you have no way out, so there's no rush in killing you."

Jacob looked to his partner, then at the Archangel, then back to Miranda before he came to a decision. With a heavy sigh, he lowered his shotgun. After giving Mianda a resigned expression of _we're really in the shit now, _Jacob then faced the Archangel again. "So where do you come in?" Jacob asked, "Why help us?"

"You're guarding the Sepulcher," replied the Archangel, "And I want to keep it out of merc hands. I don't know who you're working for, but I do know they aren't friends with the Broker, and so probably aren't friends with any of the Three either. For now, we have a common enemy."

Jacob shook his head. "And I should just buy that? How lucky of us to come across the one person on Omega who doesn't want to bend over backwards as soon as the mercs ask."

"I do."

Both men gave Miranda a long stare.

She shrugged. "What? If he's telling the truth, we gain a desperately needed ally. If he's lying, then he might kill us sure, but then he has to fight the mercs off and get the Sepulcher out the district alone. He has nothing to gain by exposing himself like this."

The Archangel turned to speak to Miranda, who was clearly in charge of the pair."Then we are agreed. We work together to somehow get the Sepulcher off Omega."

Jacob gave a reluctant nod. Miranda continued. "Then what do you propose? Air transport's out of the question, as you said we can't outlast them, and we have no way of signaling for reinforcements."

"I have a plan. First we need to-"

The Archangel was drowned out by what appeared to be a buzzing noise, like a swarm of insects, steadily growing in volume until it drowned out all sound from the nearby firefight. But strangely, it seemed like he had heard that buzzing before, like he had heard it for his entire life yet never knew it was its own individual sound. It was the ultimate background noise, omnipresent yet unknowable until that exact moment.

Then came the cloud.

A dark, amorphous mass that seemed to move of its own volition, the cloud increased in mass and volume until it blanketed the entire street. Magnification provided by his HUD showed the cloud to be composed of small insectoid sized beings, no bigger than a common mayfly.

The cloud hovered above, as if in anticipation. For a long minute, everyone stopped killing each other and stared up in awe. There was no sound save for that horrible buzzing.

Then, the wall exploded.

All three of them were hurled several feet back, kinetic barriers absorbing most of the damage. Metal rained downward in a molten rain, as a large portion of the wall facing the downed shuttle had been melted away in a large nine-foot wide circle. The air tasted of ozone, and all the while the cloud buzzed overhead.

A figure stepped through the impromptu entrance, then another, then another, and all of them like nothing Garrus had ever seen. Lanky bodies covered by chitinous plating, Bulbous heads with four dead eyes of bruised yellow. Each held a rifle that seemed almost a natural extension of their own bodies, as if they had severed a limb and turned it into a weapon.

Soon six creatures, what they could be were completely beyond anything the Archangel could guess, faced the crash site. And then a seventh stepped through. Where they were but servants, the seventh was undoubtedly their leader, their king, their god. Its chitin was a fathomless black, lines of ugly gold running along its skin like a diseased circulatory system. And its eyes were not dead orbs, but brilliant points of golden light that seemed to stare into Garrus' very soul.

A voice boomed from the seventh, or perhaps all of them, or perhaps none. A voice that Garrus had never heard before, and had never forgotten. It was a voice like that which spoke to him on Virmire, when he was still at Shepard's side, when a god proclaimed they were nothing and Shepard merely laughed. But where Sovereign was a god, this was the voice of something truly beyond him.

**FACE YOUR ANNIHILATION.**

* * *

**Leeeeeeeeeeeet's get ready to ruuuuuuuuuumble! Garrus vs. Harbinger, who will win? Tune in next week, on Dragonball ZZZZZ!**

**But no seriously, it feels good to actually advance the plot now. And hey, maybe more reviews as a result?**

**Oh, and lastly, I went back and did some rewrites of the first chapter. Nothing major in regards to plot and such, but I just wanted to bring the initial quality up to par so as to give a better first impression.**


	23. False Gods: Knock the Board Over

**False Gods: Knock the Board Over**

_Two years ago._

The rhythmic rapping always begins at midnight. Such a simple sound, the act of a fist striking the wooden board, and all too often it is accompanied by a sharp hiss of pain.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

Again and again, he wounds himself, slowly breaking every bone in his hand. If he continues, he might never be able to use it again. But he won't stop, he can't stop, and slowly, Garrus Vakarian grows stronger.

Nights at the temple are a welcome luxury. True, the temperate climate is far better than the endless blizzards of the Cyonian glaciers, or the flesh-stripping sand storms of the Tuchunkan outerlands, but Garrus has long since learned to ignore the trivial comforts of the body. Some part of him recoils at the thought of turning numb to a warm sun or an icy moon, but it is a price he pays gladly.

No, what makes these nights such a welcome change is something he always took for granted: the noise. Every night, Garrus Vakarian hears the thousand upon a thousand chirps and howls and bleats and bellows all blending together into one discordant miasma that was a sound unto itself, and adds one more to the symphony. Every night the noise is loud enough to drown out even the pain.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

On Cyone, he heard nothing but himself, as in his isolation he was forced to confront his own tortured psyche. On Tuchunka he heard nothing but the howling winds of the surrounding storms, the omnipresent predator always waiting outside to devour the outsider whole. On the _Alarei_, with Zel, he heard nothing but the perfect rhythms and motions of the machine, the pale simulacra of sound that reminded him only of just how artificial both his surroundings, and his mentor, truly were.

Garrus has grown to love the blessing of ambient noise, if only because it is in the quiet that he is forced to think on his sins. On Tla'lok he hears nothing but the jungle, and the repeated metronome of his failure to break the damn board. The thought should discourage him, but somehow only makes him try all the harder..

It has been three weeks since he has come here, three weeks since Bersaad both doomed and saved him in a single act of penance fueled by curiosity. To the west Garrus can hear a nathak's mating call, to the east he can make out the low bellows of the a migrating Calir herds, and to the north, echoing for miles around, are the piercing shrieks of the jungle's many avian species. He tries to subsume himself in the ambiance, to rise above and _listen_, but the next jolt of pain traveling up his arm sends Garrus crashing back down to earth.

_Thump. Thump. Thump_

Bersaad sits behind him, clad in the traditional grey robes of those in the Faith that choose not to follow the twenty-two gods above and below, but instead the One Between and with a spark of bemusement hidden in the upper eyes. Perhaps the old batarian enjoys this slow death, watching the alien torture himself to death out of sheer stupidity.

Bersaad is cruel to Garrus, the turian has killed men with far more compassion and understanding. But Bersaad is also fair, and through each torture Garrus gains a small sliver of insight into the arcane thing that is the _foi-ha_. Normally Bersaad would berate Garrus, would make him feel like the pathetic excuse for sentient life that Garrus long believed he was.

But that is for the day, when Sun and Conflict look down upon the pathetic turian and permit no mercyl. At night, when Crescent and Martyr hold sway and violence becomes an unwelcome guest, Bersaad is content to sit and watch Garrus slowly torture himself to death.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

It is Garrus who speaks first. It is Garrus who breaks first. He finally stops when his hand can take no more, when the plating around the knuckles has been worn away completely and each finger is bent at an odd angle.

At last, he falls to the ground, trembling in rage. His fist is bleeding, like every night, but the pain is a minor inconvenience. What is truly maddening is that Garrus Vakarian, who helped save the Citadel and all galactic civilization, who withstood torture that dragged his mind across the thin line of sanity more times than he could count, who has fought justicars, warlords, and exiled admirals, cannot manage to break a _goddamn piece of wood._

It was...humbling...to say the least. Maddening, to say the truth. A greater torture than even the most sadistic spirit in the long line of spirits no doubt trapped in the mortal plane of existence for the express purpose of making Garrus' life the most miserable possible life, to say the very worst.

As he lies panting on the wet dirt, Bersaad speaks. "The wood should fear you." Garrus turned to Bersaad, who continued. "Not the other way around."

Garrus does not speak. The rules have long since been made clear as to when the student was allowed to respond. _Painfully_ clear, he might add. Instead, he lets the old monk continue his lecture, pushing down the rage and indignation where it settles like a hot coal in his throat

Bersaad looks disappointed, like always, as if Garrus is still failing to grasp such an obvious truth. "It is no wonder you continue to fail. You acquiesce to defeat before you even begin."

Rising from the ground, Bersaad strides to face the board. "Do not perceive it as you attempting to break the board. Instead, see it as the board attempting to break _you_."

With a fluid motion, the master draws back a fist and punches through the board as if it was made of flimsy paper. A perfect hole is formed, without splinters or scratches, as if the hole was always destined to be there. Bersaad turned back to Garrus. "Wood yields to iron. Become iron. Your past training may have taught you to ignore pain, or ignore despair, or even ignore logic and reason, only to press on until you drop dead." The batarian holds up his fist, with nary a mark upon it. "But to learn the _foi-ha_, to become one with the greatest expression of the gods, you must first learn to resist."

Bersaad motions to the board. "Only the indomitable may master the sacred arts. Now, again."

Sighing, Garrus draws himself back up again. Clenching a bleeding fist, he strikes the board again, Bersaad's perfect blow serving as a mocking reminder.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

**AA**

_Present day._

At first, he tried to fight.

Priming his gauntlets and readying his daggers, the Archangel rushed forward to meet his new foe. Behind him, Jacob flared a shimmering blue as he called up a biotic barrier, and Miranda drew a small Predator pistol with a glowing omnitool in hand. There was no time for speculation, no time to wonder how or why some Reaper construct was on Omega. All that mattered was that it was a threat that made the legions of mercs surrounding them pale in comparison.

He rushed forward to try and close the distance between him and his target. Before the Archangel had even taken his first step, the construct moved. Lines of gold flared, eyes of gold pulsed into brilliant streaks of yellow light, and it's right arm reared back to hurl a wave of unmatched force.

**INSIGNIFICANT.**

A sphere of yellow streaked with fathomless black coalesced and shot outward, arcs of pure energy flashing outwards in a wide it is moving, faster than a bullet as it manifested as a brilliant streak. The Archangel knew that were this attack to connect, he would simply be unmade, that it would shatter the bonds of his component atoms. There is not nearly enough time to dodge however, so instead he uses the fractions of a second to draw and harden his cloak around him.

While the polycristalline that makes up his cloak's hard-light shield can absorb biotic energy, and even a certain degree of force, it has its limits. A good suit of armor might be able to stop a bullet, but not a cannon. While his cloak could dissipate a standard Warp field, resist a Pull, absorb a Push, it was helpless when some kind of biotic superbeing hurled a newborn star at point blank range.

At the moment of collision time seemed to freeze, as if causality itself had been broken. All the Archangel could see was light, a perfect point of light at the exact atom where the sphere met the shield. But after an eternity, reality immovable object yielded to the unstoppable force.

It was like being hit a krogan traveled at light speed. That he wasn't atomized outright was a miracle in itself. The Archangel was hurled back a good twenty feet, where he hit the nearby crumbling wall hard enough to leave an imprint an inch deep. His HUD was screaming every kind of emergency, his shields were in tatters, and everything hurt in ways he hadn't felt since he endured the Agony Matrix under Samara.

The air seemed to distort around the black demigod like a heat shimmer, the swarm roaring their appraisal overhead in a chittering chorus. Its six servants stood motionless around what could only be their leader, rifles held at the ready. Somehow, the Archangel knew they would not need them, not when their champion had taken the field, not when they could reshape reality on command.

**YOU CANNOT RESIST.**

The Archangel can see he was now completely out of his element, no plan, contingency, trick, or training could ever account for this. He had been trained to fight mercenaries, criminals, degenerates, scum were half the battle was making them believe they were already beaten. This was an opponent that could not be deterred, distracted, intimidated, or partitioned. It was like trying to take apart a mountain stone by stone.

To continue was suicide. Why die for something so nebulous as the Sepulcher? Wasn't it enough that it had been denied to the mercs? This thing would march through the streets and slaughter indiscriminately, purging the block of any and all resistance before it made off with its prize. Hadn't that been why he had come here in the first place, to set the Three against each other, slamp a bomb on the damn thing, and laugh as yet again he had managed to outwit all Omega?

No. He shut down that line of thought almost as soon as it sprung up. There were rumors, whispers, lies, half-truths, speculation surrounding the Sepulcher. Omega had gone to war with itself over such a prize, and if left unchecked could send the entire Terminus ablaze. It had to be worth something to Omega, and Omega had a very questionable sense of worth. His foes believed the Sepulcher was worth any sacrifice, and Garrus would respond in kind.

As he struggled to rise, the scant few pieces began to fit together and the Archangel now had his suspicions. More importantly, he now had a reason to fight.

But first, he needed context. Knowledge was power, as the humans said, and judging by the two operatives' guarded expressions at his defeat, they wielded far more power in the present situation than they let on. The Archangel ghosted to Miranda, who with her partner had taken cover behind an overturned skycar. He whispered to her as the construct marched past. "Is it alive?"

Seconds from death as they stared down at a being literally flowing with power, capable of overpowering three mercenary armies with just six of its own soldiers, Jacob could still do nothing but glance back with a baffled expression. "_What_?" he hissed.

"No time! Are any of them sentient? Capable of cognitive thought?"

Miranda took it all in stride. "No, at least as far as we can tell." So she did know what this thing was, something to expand upon later. "Autopsies have revealed them to be something akin to an extremely advanced organic machine rather than a living organism. They house a basic neural architecture capable only of receiving orders via direct input, which can then be overridden to house what we surmise to be a directing consciousness."

"Why the hell should that matter?", Jacob hissed back, his translucent barrier already flaring with so much biotic discharge in the air. "You gonna try and have a heart-to-heart?"

The Archangel ignored him. Good, the rules were clear again. Not sentient, not _alive_. He wouldn't need to hold back, and his conscience could rest easy. They could be lying, but he couldn't really afford the luxury of trust at the moment. For now, the Archangel would just need to accept that Miranda had no overt reason to deceive him, and if she did, she would pay dearly.

The Archangel had been tapped into enemy comms since the battle even begun. He knew that a squad of Blue Suns had been dispatched to answer their comrades' desperate pleas for aid originating from the small alleyway. And when they heard that some kind of...shadow was behind it, the seven mercs had unanimously voted to call for additional support. After all, it was one thing to boast to your drinking buddies that you don't believe in vengeful spirits haunting the streets, it was quite another to hear that said spirit might not only be real, but might be out _hunting_.

So not one, but _three_ squads had cordoned off the alley entrance, where they expected to overwhelm the Archangel with sheer numbers. What they did not expect was for a swarm of what they could only guess to be bugs settle over the street, some kind of what they could only refer to as bug-men stepping through a hole in the wall, and then having the Archangel, the sum total of all their unspoken fears, be blasted a good fifty feet into a wall by what they could only stare at in awe.

Naturally, this stupor did not last long. The mercs reacted as they always did, they saw something they didn't recognize, and decided to shoot it. A lot. Twenty-one men unloaded their rifles, with enough firepower to strip barriers, armor, and flesh off the bone all in one prolonged volley.

The servant caste sprung to action, rifles raised and already firing as they too ducked behind cover. The mercs engaged them, seemingly ignoring the true threat. One's head explodes in a corona of viscous yellow fluid, another is torn to shreds under a combined assault. Six against twenty after all, no matter the species, is hardly a fair fight. It didn't matter, the servants were clearly only a distraction.

**OUR POWER IS UNMATCHED.**

To call the voice deafening would imply it used sound. Rather, the Archangel felt rather than heard the words, each syllable reverberating across every fiber of his being. It was unnerving, to hear the voice of a greater being. As it speaks, single word worms its way into the Archangel's mind-_Harbinger_-from where he can not begin to guess.

The mercs directed their fire toward the newly-named Harbinger, but what can such simple devices hope to do against a god made manifest, with all the power of creation at its beck and call? Garrus had met a Reaper, he had spoken with the vanguard of extinction itself. If this Harbinger was anything like Sovereign, he knew this creature wasn't just powerful, it was the very _idea_ of power, the concept of supremacy made manifest, an entity capable of bending reality to its unknowable will.

Bullets pattered off its barriers like rain falling on hot steel. A man prepared to hurl a grenade, when it exploded in his hand and showered him and anyone nearby in molten metal shards. The Harbinger drew its arm back again, its entire body pulsing with tainted power, and hurled another dark sphere at the host arrayed before it.

This sphere traveled slower than the last, and anything it came into contact with was instantly atomized. Anyone close enough was pulled into its gravity well in some twisted version of a Singularity, and the results were not nearly as clean. Men screamed as they were slowly pulled apart, their bodies ripped in half, then into quarters, then into eighths, until the sphere was ringed by orbiting bits of chunky gore.

It was truly nightmarish, above and beyond anything Omega's darkest dreams, and the sight of watching men simply come _apart_ at the hands of this thing was unsettling enough that even Jacob blanched at the carnage. This was biotic power in its worst possible expression, what every bigot feared was a very real possibility should biotics go unchecked. No doubt it unsettled the soldier, to see his gift perverted so. And just as the projectile crossed a distance of eight meters, the Harbinger closed its open fist, its four eyes still burning bright as the sphere imploded.

The release of so much restrained energy was nothing short of cataclysmic, incinerating several more mercs and splattering the entire alley with viscera.

What remained of the three squads tried to run, but there would be no survivors. The Harbinger raised an outstretched hand, and the seven fleeing mercs found themselves caught in an invisible grip. At some unseen gesture, they were shot up into the swarms above, their shrieks still audible as millions of small teeth and claws tore their bodies to shreds.

**EMBRACE PERFECTION. **

Blood began to rain down from above as the Archangel found his voice again. "We're clear" he whispered to Harbinger had left the alley, four remaining servants in tow.

The immaculate female let out a small sigh of relief, and her compatriot visibly relaxed. A sight like that could unnerve anyone, even professionals like them.

"So first, we can assume that whoever or whatever that was," _Harbinger_, his subconscious whispered, "its after the Sepulcher."

Miranda nodded in agreement. "Too much of a coincidence to assume otherwise. Right now, the Sepulcher's the only thing worth having on Omega. Not too much of a stretch that outside parties are also after it."

"_Outside parties?_"

She shrugged, a habit picked up no doubt from seeing so many other plans go sideways. "I'm trying to be rational here. What else would you call that?"

"Fair enough. Do we have a plan for moving the Sepulcher to safety?"

"Well yes, at least in part. The initial plan was to let the mercs wear away at each other, then comm for extraction. We were to hold our location until it arrived."

"ETA?"

"About ten minutes."

Jacob poked his head out from behind cover to confirm that the Harbinger had indeed lost interest in their little group. "But in case you haven't noticed," he waved his shotgun back at the messy remnants of the brief battle, "That plan's kinda fucked. That...thing is practically right on top of the shuttle. We'll be dust and the Sep'll be gone by the time evac shows up."

The Archangel briefly looked downward, deep in thought, then back up to the both of them. "Then we improvise."

Miranda gave a pensive look. "What do you propose?"

"Something tells me this thing isn't too keen on backing down from a fight, so I give it one. Hopefully I last long enough against it to lead it away from the shuttle and buy you two some time."

Jacob shook his head. "Did you not just see that thing turn twenty mercs into _paste_? You wouldn't last five seconds."

Beneath his mask, Garrus Vakarian smiled for the first time in a very long time. Despite how very complicated the situation had become, things suddenly felt much simpler. "Try me."

Miranda was silent for a few moments after. "You're willing to die for us?" she asked tentatively. "For the Sepulcher? Not to sound ungrateful, but we literally just met. Chances are you don't even know what the Sepulcher even is."

"You have nothing to lose by doubting me. I'm the one risking my life here."

"He's right." Jacob grimaced as he indirectly asked a man to die for him. "This seems like the only way any of us get out of here alive."

Strange, for the stubborn male to take his side by the very end. The Archangel gave a nod of respect towards Jacob. "But before I go, to fight what is almost guaranteed to be my last fight, let me ask you this." He turned to stare at Miranda, steel blue eyes meeting burning slits of green. "Is it worth it? I know you won't tell me what it really is, but give me something to go on. Give me a reason to die for something I'll probably never see."

Miranda seemed wage an internal argument with herself, one that she apparently lost. "Yes, it is worth it. The rumors are true, at least to a certain degree."

The Archangel could see the Harbinger walking across the battlefield, slaughtering mercs of every allegiance left and right. "That's all I needed to hear." He rose up to his full height, his cape flaring outward as he readied himself for yet another battle. "Make it count, Miranda, for all our sakes."

A shadow passes, a remarkable feat when the swarm blocked any overhead light.

"I will, and thank-"

The last word dies on her lips, as she sees he is gone.

**AA**

Where the Harbinger moves, people die.

Some try to fight, to resist, but they are powerless before even this temporary shell. Their bodies, fragile sacks of fluids and tissues all haphazardly stacked together in yet another demonstration of the organic paradox, come apart so easily under its will. Nothing can stand before it, nothing ever could, soon the Harbinger will reach the Aberration and so many interlocking plans will at last come to fruition.

A complication, minor, yet unexpected. One of the empty vessels has fallen silent. Impossible, all forces and trajectories have been accounted for in the grand design and thus everything has been predicted down to the microsecond. What dares to defy the Harbinger's will so blatantly, what dares move against causality?

"Hi."

Directing its will outwards, the Harbinger instantly identifies the disturbance. Standing over the corpse of a vessel with its head cleanly sliced off is the same masked figure as encountered nine point fourteen seconds ago.

**RACIAL DESIGNATION: TURIAN. LIMITED GENETIC VARIABILITY UNSUITABLE FOR CONVERSION. INGRAINED SOCIOLOGICAL RESISTANCE UNSUITABLE FOR SUBSERVIENCE. VERDICT:**

**UNWORTHY OF ASCENSION.**

"Well gee, I bet that makes all the turian females just line up at the door." said the turian, a pathetic attempt to use humor as a psychological coping mechanism. This _organic_ was ignorant of the perfection standing before it. It would soon learn, however.

**FACE YOUR END AND BECOME NOTH-**

"Hold that thought."

The Harbinger would never be interrupted by an organic, yet it was interrupted all the same. Not by an organic, of course, but by a direct collision with a V-33 Vorpal traveling at a speed upwards of several hundred miles per hour.

If a Reaper was not above such base organic compulsions as _anger_, the Harbinger would be _pissed_.


	24. False Gods: Fist Fight

**False Gods: Fist Fight**

Before insectoid cyborgs possessed by omniscient god-machines were rampaging through the streets and slaughtering mercenaries by the dozen, all while amidst a three-way battle for the nebulous promise of greater riches that had more than likely already amassed a higher casualty than the First Contact War, the strangest thing in Doru District was probably a small store named _Ganno's._

Set up by an asari businessmatron over sixty years ago, she had funded the venture partly on a dare. The matron had, after all, built up her reputation across the Republics by funding such niche pursuits in such ill-suited locations, and then doing the impossible and turning a profit. She was responsible for a chain of dextro seafood restaurants in Tokyo, a salarian escort service located on Palaven, and the proliferation throughout asari space of a series of human toys modeled off an extinct animal from their homeworld called the "teddy bear". Each time they had called her mad, and each time she had proved them wrong.

Until one day at a fundraiser, when she boasted that she had spread her financial empire to every corner of the galaxy. One of her many rivals responded by pointing out that no, there was indeed one place that she had yet to set up roots in: the lawless wastes of the Terminus. Laughing, and probably a little drunk, the businessmatron loudly proclaimed that she not only would she pursue a new market of the rival's choice, but on the world of his choice as well. When the upstart made his selection, the businessmatron laughed and said that she would own half the station within the week.

Although regretting it the next morning, the businessmatron stayed true to her word. She bought, renovated, and then reopened the shop in Doru District, and prepared for the place to burn down within the week. The businessmatron named it _Ganno's,_ after her rival Ganno Antiquis. She understandably didn't expect the place to last very long, but the businessmatron had the money to spare to view the whole thing as merely another drunken escapade, so she paid it little thought. She had even given her insurance company a reasonable time estimate of the shop burning down in about a week.

Somehow, against all odds, the businessmatron was wrong.

While never a booming success, _Ganno's_ did manage to maintain a small but servicable customer base that just barely kept the bills paid and the shelves stocked. Where these clients actually came from were anyone's guess, as Doru was filled only with the grimy scumsuckers working on station maintenance. Miraculously, in a place so unpredicatable that sometimes gun runners went broke and killers-for-hire couldn't find anyone willing to hire, _Ganno's _had managed to last upwards of five years on the station where "honest living" was considered an oxymoron.

The storewas right now empty of course, with the manager and any customers having fled soon after the firefight began. But while every other building and business in the district was being looted and ravaged by the marauding hordes, _Ganno's _remained untouched. The doors weren't even locked, and still no one bothered to break in. They knew that _Ganno's_ held nothing of any real worth. Even the battle itself somehow avoided the small shop entirely, and the place stood unscathed amidst a backdrop of bullet holes and bomb craters.

So, for a time, _Ganno's_ was yet again going to make it through another day on Omega.

Until the Archangel was hurled through the front door as if shot out of a very large cannon, where he then proceeded to slam into the far back wall. Glass was sent flying in all directions as the windows and display cases were all shattered by the impact, which in turn scattered innumerable baubles and trinkets and knickknacks throughout the store like so much debris.

_Ow_, was his first cognizant thought. _Ow _also managed a full sweep by taking second, third, and fourth.

The Archangel's armor VI rattled off a worryingly long list of critical failures in multiple systems, breached plating, compromised barriers, and a thousand other issues that would have probably killed him a dozen times over if not for the suit. Rune was currently flitting through each problem and attempting to fix it as best 'she' could, but the best she could manage was an extremely roughshod patch job. Glyph unhelpfully chattered away nonstop as he repeated the suit VI's warnings almost verbatim, so as usual the Archangel tuned him out. And Cypher...

"So," asked Cypher, who asked with a sarcastic air that had probably taken tens of thousands of man hours to code, "what did we learn?"

"When they throw a sun at me," Garrus grunted as he heaved himself to his feet. "I should probably move_._" He probed for injuries, and he found his left mandible cracked, a tooth to be missing, and his left arm to be bent at a very odd angle. Luckily, his omnitool, as well as most of his tools, was still intact, so that was something.

"And?"

"Vigilantism is a _lot_ harder than I thought it would be," Garrus grunted as he popped his shoulder back in its socket, then keyed for medigel. "I just thought I'd be fighting a few thousand mercs. But nooooo, it can't even be that simple! Instead I get schizophrenic salarians and elitist vorcha and galaxy-wide conspiracies that would make any two-bit sci-fi writer's head spin."

"But this tops it all," he continued, "As if I didn't have enough shit on my plate as it is," Garrus waved a gauntlet over two skycars lying outside unattended in the street, where they glowed a faint orange. "I get a _Reaper_." Garrus then withdrew two small discs from his gauntlet, and placed one on each side of the store entrance.

It was always healthy to let off a little steam, and by every spirit Garrus needed all the health he could scrounge together. "I mean, this isn't some backwater colony housing a recently unearthed ancient artifact that bestows prophetic visions of doom," Garrus drew his omnibow, loaded it with one of his specially crafted rounds, and fired into a distant wall, all the while ranting to no one in particular, "or the center of galactic civilization, believed to be a forgotten relic of an extinct empire but actually meant to serve as a trap in a plot to end all organic life. No, this is _Omega_. Of all the places in all the galaxy that I'd bet a Reaper would never even think of going near, Omega would be a pretty safe bet," Garrus shook his head, "But _of course_, as soon as I set up shop, here comes a Reaper!"

"Unidentified hostile force approaching," interrupted Glyph, as if reciting the weather instead of an angry god's oncoming wrath, "Estimated time of arrival: forty seconds."

Garrus ignored him. "And I never thought I'd say it, but I don't just get any run-of-the-mill Reaper," he said, "but its a Reaper that doesn't even fight by its _own damn rules_! I mean, don't get me wrong, I was prepared for the whole possession bit, I was there when Sovereign turned Saren into his own personal hopping puppet," Although unnerving at the time, in hindsight Garrus did see the whole thing as a bit goofy. "But when we killed the weird demon-frog thing, it stayed dead! Sure it soaked up a lot more bullets, but it still went down, and when it did, POOF, it crumbled neatly into a pile of dust, easy for for the station crew to clean up. There sure as hell wasn't _another_ hopping puppet Saren right around the corner!"

Garrus generally didn't like surprises, and this had been the surprise of his life. After ramming his car full bore into the construct's exposed backside and satisfyingly smirking as what remained of the corpse turned to ash, after a bright golden flash behind him, an identical copy of the Reaper's avatar then grabbed Garrus by the cowl and flung him clear across the district. At least he hadn't been outright disintegrated like the unfortunate mercs caught in its path, so Garrus considered that a very weak plus.

"I mean that's just unfair!" he whined to no one in particular. Was it so much to ask that the universe granted Garrus even the tiniest little break that, when fighting the synthetic abomination that had probably been killing on a galactic scale for billions of years, that his opponent stay dead when it died?

Garrus supposed he just answered his own question.

"Twenty seconds."

"Yeah, yeah, you already did the whole countdown bit. In the future, Glyph, try to mix it up a little. Keeps fights fresh."

Now Garrus could make out a small yellow light speeding towards him at frightening speeds. He stood in the doorway and waited.

With probably less than a minute of life left in this mockingly cruel galaxy to spend, Garrus decided to spend what little time before his annihilation to turn around and at least appreciate the decor of the establishment he had just vandalized. The interior decoration appeared to be made of oak wood, probably synthetic, giving the place a very rustic air that was almost wholeheartedly human.

All around sat old furniture that probably predated first contact with humanity, and the cloud of dust hanging over the store made Garrus' nose itch like mad. On the walls hung pictures of old Earth, ancient automobiles, black-and-white cities, even self-portraits of ancient humans. Strangely, a horned mammal's head ("moose", the label underneath the mantel had provided) had stood guard over the store entrance, but Garrus knocked it loose with his unintended visit.

Wait, this place wasn't a hunting outfitter, as the stuffed animal corpse implied. There was no evidence that firearms were sold here, only assorted dusty and rusty old human junk that, by looking at the price tags, Garrus could tell was almost criminally overpriced. Seeking anything to take his mind off the next ten to twenty seconds, Garrus put his detective skills to work, and solved his most recent mystery.

This was an antiques shop. Shepard used to talk about how there used to be one back on Earth, and she used to visit it everyday before her family moved to Mindoir.

Garrus then looked up and saw the large holographic banner hanging above the kiosk terminal. Dotted with oblong grey heads with black eyes, the banner in bright green letters spelled out WE COME IN PEACE. Garrus had heard or seen the line too an almost sickening degree back on the Citadel, it was the classic marketing technique of alien companies attempted to cash in on the new fascination with human culture and history. It was an offensively obvious marketing tactic for snagging any wide-eyed tourists walking in, while simultaneously driving away anyone who possessed a modicum of taste.

Yeah, he thought, this place was pretty tacky. Why anyone would shop here on a _civilized_ world was anyone's guess, how this place hadn't been looted of everything save the bolted down desks was a mystery not even the Archangel was equipped to tackle just yet. So, Garrus had just been thrown into a tacky antiques shop. On _Omega_. Garrus was now about to fight an omnicidal god-machine, pretending to be a giant bug, to the death, in a tacky antiques shop, on Omega.

Garrus' mind briefly seized at that. He tried to remember a time when he was just a rookie officer making his rounds on the Presidium, and his biggest concern of the day was trying to fudge his quota numbers without his rat-faced bastard of a superior sniffing him out.

Ah, how times changed.

The Harbinger cratered into the street with the force of a falling star. The shockwave briefly rattled every window within three blocks, then the street fell back into silence. When the dust cleared, four eyes of tainted gold stared back at four eyes of burning emerald.

Garrus had one last stray thought before he acted. _You know, this place isn't too far from being at least a little classy. Maybe have a few more paintings instead of pictures, maybe some hand-made knickknacks and such. Granted, something tells me the owner isn't exactly a connoisseur of fine art, but a little effort always goes a long way. Yeah, this would be much nicer if it were fought in a __**classy**__ antique's shop._

Garrus didn't even bother with a warning this time. Keying his omnitool, he activated Rune's newest project: remote magnetization.

**YOU ATTEMPT TO DIVERT THE FLOW OF ETERNITY, AND SO ITS TIDES SHALL SWEEP YOU ASI-**

The Harbinger was interrupted yet again, when two skycars were quickly and violently pulled together by a sudden increase in magnetic attraction, which then crashed together with the Harbinger sandwiched in the middle. Reacting impossibly fast, the Harbinger pulled up a Barrier, and the two vehicles crushed themselves around the ellipsoid sphere. As the flaming halves fell away, Garrus thumbed yet another key, and before the Harbinger could retort with yet another booming rant, the skycar wreckage exploded. The construct's shields briefly flared to a blinding white, then the golden orb fell away entirely.

The Archangel watched as his first line of defense both simultaneously succeeded and failed. Burning wreckage continued to fall as smoke soon obscured the surrounding block.

The Harbinger immediately retaliated. It drew its arm back and threw another Sphere at the unmoved Archangel, who responded by activating his still functional jet boots and rocketed upward. The Harbinger detonated its Sphere, the blastwave sending the Archangel flying, before reaching out with its right hand and catching the turian in its biotic grip.

Archangel hissed as the Harbinger slowly tightened its grip, the growing pressure on his ribs and arm reminding him of just how poorly their last encounter had gone. The Archangel also briefly wondered why the Reaper hadn't just killed him yet.

Oh right, it liked to brag. Probably why it had also left the Sepulchre exposed to pursue a potential challenger. Kind of odd for a machine to possess an ego, but Archangel was willing to take any potentially fatal flaw and exploit it to its fullest. Insulting this thing wouldn't work though, it was obvious it only responded to action. This thing obviously believed it was perfect in every way, and that nothing could ever hope to stand against it. When Archangel had destroyed its corporeal body, had caught the supposedly omniscient machine unawares, it was probably insulted in ways no mortal could possibly comprehend.

Good, it meant this thing had a motive. And if it had a motive, it was predictable.

**YOU ARE BUT A MOTE OF DUST IN COSMIC WINDS, AN IMPOSSIBLY SMALL FOOTNOTE ON A PATH FIRST WALKED BEFORE YOUR HOMEWORLD GAINED SOLID FORM.**

The Archangel stared into its dead eyes, blazing gold with unimaginable power. "Funny you should mention dust..." he half choked, half chuckled, then activated his contingency plan via his helmet HUD.

The two discs behind the store entrance glowed bright blue, as did the arrow embedded in the opposite building. A steady vibrating began to emanate from all around, and the air began to taste of ozone. Seconds later, small arcs of electricity could be seen shooting out between any adjoining metal objects, and the Harbinger could only watch as the biotic field gripping the Archangel dissipated, and the turian fell back to the charged streets below.

"Voltaic overcharge field," said Archangel, who was glad to see the weapon's first test run had been a resounding success, "salarians developed it after the Battle of the Citadel. Not just an EMP, which a geth can eventually recover from, but actually a series of electric pulses simultaneously emitting on millions of wavelengths that short out _any _electrical signals, even those between brain synapses, while leaving anyone with armor attuned to a certain vibration," he rapped his chestplate, "completely unaffected."

The Harbinger's glow began to dim, and it soon no longer had the power to float. The construct crashed back down to the ground, now held together only through pure willpower. It fell to one knee as it desperately attempted to gather enough energy to vaporize the impossibly arrogant turian.

"See," Archangel continued, "I have a hunch. There's some kind of signal linking you and that body, but its probably much stronger than your standard tech. So while a standard EMP might not get the job done, hell that wouldn't even take care of your standard mech for very long, but luckily, I always come prepared. Now granted, this little song and dance I've set up still wouldn't be enough to permanently shut your link off, but its enough to interrupt it, if only for a second."

Archangel crossed his arms as the field intensified. The sheer volume of energy in the air was making his plates itch. "And I, for one," he said, "am _very_ curious to see what that'll do to you."

The Harbinger drew its ovoid head to stare at him. Emotionless, it continued to stare as slowly, its body fell apart. First its left arm, then right leg, then upper chest collapsed into ash. The hollow body collapsed to the ground, but the head remained intact and the eyes continued to glow a hateful yellow for a few seconds more.

**THIS FORM IS MEANINGLESS. KILL ONE AND ONE HUNDRED SHALL REPLACE IT.**

"Forgive me for saying that sounds like a bit of a cop out."

The Harbinger was gone before Archangel even finished the sentence. Garrus let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"See you soon."

**AA**

Disc looked through his rifle scope again, and saw the streets had finally gone quiet. It was understandable that the fighting should start to settle down, especially after that _whatever it was_ started striding about and mulched any Suns or Pack that got in its way.

"Clear," he murmured, turning back to face the rest of the team.

Will nodded, sweat already beginning to bead again on his brow. He messily wiped the moisture from his face as he fearfully looked back up to the roaring swarm overhead. Disc was just surprised that Will hadn't done the smart thing and tried to desert yet, what with all the shit hitting the fan. This was the kid's first major op after all, and the green was really starting to show.

Golden eyes still narrowed at the carnage strewn about below, Ing's head twitched back and forth as her optical implants searched for any sign of the hostile. "For now," she said, still staring out across the ruins of the battlefield,

Will nervously, as if he did anything normally, glanced back at the Asian woman. "What do you mean, _for now_?" he replied, like the classic rookie that he was, "We saw the car crash into the thing, we saw it get dusted."

"Doesn't mean there aren't others like it," Ing dryly intoned, "or that it didn't come without reinforcements. More likely they're just regrouping before coming to take another pass at the Sepulcher."

Ing had originally proposed taking a shot at it while the fodder below kept the thing occupied, but the major had decided against both exposing their position, and antagonizing a complete unknown. They would continue to wait on the rooftop, Morl said, and standby for further orders. Made sense at the time, respect the chain of command, only problem was that communications were cut as soon as the swarm flooded in.

And then, a stray bullet had somehow managed to bypass Morl's shields and blow his unhelmeted brains out, complicating things to an even further degree of shit hitting the fan. Nobody had replaced him and assumed command yet, primarily because it was a tad redundant having a second-in-command in a squad of only four.

Disc leaned against the balcony railing, "Didn't see any sign of it," he said, "and the other mercs have backed off for now."

"Doesn't mean its not coming back," Ing replied, face still an impassive mask. Disc could see she wasn't scared in the least, but like the rest of them probably wasn't too keen on dying today, "and you said you spotting one of the non-glowing ones standing guard outside the alley."

"So now what?"

"Nothing's changed." Ing turned to Will, "You find anyone on the comm yet?"

"N-nothing. Jamming field must still be in place." Will continued fidgeting with his omni in an attempt to take his mind off the razor cloud hovering overhead that had shredded six mercs and showered him with their remains in a red rain.

Ing furrowed her brow. "No," she said, "Suns and Pack are too organized for a total blackout. It's clear comms still work inside the sphere, and the other teams should have reported back in."

"Probably means we're the only ones left," Disc nonchalantly replied, which only seemed to drive Will deeper off the edge.

So after losing contact with the chain of command, the three of them decided to hold their position and wait for the situation to develop, which meant Disc got to watch as a glowy bug-thing spawned from his childhood nightmares ripped apart a full platoon of trained Blue Suns as if they were sacks of meat. He got to watch as a krogan twice his size charged the bug and was literally torn in half, perfectly bisected into two neat halves that peeled apart from a monomolecular cut.

He got to watch as a new player entered, though he couldn't make the figure out very clearly. Seemingly little more than a dark shadow with four burning green eyes, and with no visible weapons on him, Disc watched as the shadow was hit by one of the bug-thing's energy attacks. And whereas he just saw that same attack atomize seven men and tear the other seven apart, this time the sphere hit its target, there was a huge flash of light, and the shadow was blown back into the alley instead of outright atomized.

Disc expected that, he was pretty sure that whatever was down there had enough biotic power to juggle frigates, what he did not expect was for the shadow to step back out of the alley's darkness. And then not only that, but for the V-33 Vorpal, stolen from Eclipse about three months ago, to suddenly materialize and ram the bug at nearly full speed.

Crazy day.

While Will fiddled and Ing remained stoic as ever, Disc pulled a flask from his belt and took a healthy swig and closed his eyes. Feeling the whiskey's warm glow settle in his stomach seemed to be the only part of today that didn't feel like a part of some insane acid trip. Disc then briefly wondered if he should take even more of the edge off with the small pouch of red sand tucked into his boot. Maybe he could share with Ing and Will and they would have themselves a nice little party while bugs tore apart any Blues or Reds outside. Disc no longer cared, fuck the Sepulcher and fuck Eclipse, because he hadn't signed on to fight gods and shadows for a reason they didn't even bother giving him.

Will curled his nose in distaste at the sight of his squadmate drinking in these circumstances, probably still believing that mercenary work had even a fraction of the professionalism seen in the military. Ing just briefly glanced Disc's way as the alcohol's scent wafted over to her, and Disc wiggled his eyebrows back. She snorted and rolled her eyes, then went back to observing the street. Disc smiled and took another drink.

The three just sat there for a few minutes in silence, quietly stewing in their private thoughts. What those thoughts of the other two might have been, Disc couldn't have guessed for the life of him.

Then something caught his eye, a brief flare in the city streets outside. Disc turned away from his quiet buzz and back onto the balcony, where he brought the rifle scope back up to his eye. First thing Disc saw was the creature marching down the street to the Sepulcher, with the three lesser versions in tow. "It's back," the sniper muttered back to Ing.

Standing in the creature's path was a flimsy barricade erected by the Suns. Disc could see more than twenty mercs holding the line, and he knew it wouldn't be nearly enough. He sat back and braced himself for the coming slaughter.

But then, he saw the shadow fall from on high and land on the war torn street below, despite the bug having been seemingly hurled it into a new star system after their last battle. The shadow interposed itself at the exact midway point between the Harbinger (where did he get that name?) and the mercenaries. Disc saw the lone figure, with hands on fire and with eyes burning a defiant jade to the Harbinger's sickly gold. He saw the shadow drop into what looked like a fighting stance.

Then, the shadow moved, and Disc _believed_.

**AA**

Omega has many stories, and its people love to tell them. Very few can afford any level of decent entertainment that didn't immediately extend to booze, strippers, or on a very good payday, both, so they turn to the cheap alternative of conversation. Even if it was just to pass the time between work shifts, or before hitting a new mark, or while flying ten miles high off in Hallex heaven, Omegans trade stories between them like the ancient human lorekeepers of yore, passing oral histories in the absence of the written word.

The problem with that, or perhaps the benefit, is that a story always changes with a new telling. A detail is always omitted, or an outright lie told in its place. Some character's role is always either downplayed or exaggerated, as history is so very wont to do. The narrator's beliefs and preferences might color actions and events in strikingly different shades of black or white, but rarely ever delving into grey. And with each telling, the tale only distorts further, until very soon it becomes something unrecognizable.

The duel between the brothers Des Del and Del Des, said to have spanned seven districts and lasted a full week, might have actually just been the former bringing seventeen armed men for support as he beat the chained latter into a bloody pulp. Gondar and his impossible shot, which seemed to curve around an entire district to find its target, might have just been the result of the bounty hunter wisely using a fairly expensive smart bullet with homing capabilities. But none of that really matters to the people of Omega, because telling the story had never been about telling the truth.

But some stories, and their heroes, do not need to be so needlessly built up. Some have the rare distinction of only being told one way, and so have lasted the centuries relatively unchanged. These rare individuals and their accomplishments have existed in the annals of every species' history and will for many millennia more. Legends such as the last turian emperor Barbaritas standing tall atop the Iron Cliffs, where his three hundred honor guard faced a million usurpers and very nearly won, or the salarian Silent Step and the victory at Xiaphos, where he defeated a nation with a single shot. Or even Overlord Kredak, who the krogan boast did not die even when the asari cowards dropped a moon on him.

The stories of these titans will be told until the galaxy crumbles into dust, for even after the descendants of these impossible few had conquered the stars themselves, they would look to these titans with nothing short of awe. For it it in these impossible acts that mere mortals were elevated to the closest approximation of godhood: passing into the halls of immortality because they became more than just a story...

...they became _legends._

The people of Omega would tell the story of the Archangel and his fight against the Harbinger until the galaxy crumbled into dust. Even after the station fell into the sun, the few who would remain would look upon that day with nothing short of awe.

This time there was no clever trap sprung, because the Archangel had all but exhausted his remaining arsenal on the other bodies. Now there was only his fists, his mind, and what was left of his failing armor systems, which were all extremely close to failing mid-combat.

He could try to dodge and misdirect. He could try to put all his stealth training to use and fade back into the alley shadows while the Harbinger tore the men behind apart. He could tell Rune to bring the Hawk to his position, tether the Sepulcher on a mag line, fly out and become the most hunted person in the Terminus. He could do all of those things, in fact, he should have, it was the wisest course of action. It was what any smart turian would do.

Then again, a smart turian would never have come to Omega.

The mercs behind him gaped as the Archangel charged an unstoppable biotic storm with no visible weapon. The Harbinger threw a sphere, and its servants behind him opened fire with their strange rifles. The Archangel dashed to the side using his suit jets, while his shields absorbed the barrage. The sphere rocketed past him and obliterated a shoddy electronics store. He flung a volley of daggers, but in an uncharacteristic display of poor marksmanship they didn't even come close to hitting the Harbinger. The Suns looked on in confusion.

Until two of the three aliens behind the Harbinger suddenly exploded as the blades detonated. The Harbinger seemed to take note, as it only flared brighter and punched out what resembled a Warp . The Archangel dashed again, but not quickly enough this time, and the blast just from the projectile hitting close to him was enough to send the vigilante sprawling.

**WE WILL END YOU FOR DARING TO STAND AGAINST PERFECTION.**

"Maybe," the mercs thought they heard the Archangel whisper, "but I'm going to make you work for it."

The Archangel spread his wings wide and rocketed forward. The Harbinger launched a weakened Sphere, and the Archangel flared out his cape. The Sphere impacted, and the Archangel was thrown back again. The Harbinger followed up with yet another Warp before its opponent could recover, then biotically tossed him into a wall and into the building. The principal threat having been dealt with, it turned back to the barricade.

Still awed, the Suns tore their eyes away from what used to be the Archangel and readied themselves for a hopeless last stand. They knew they were already dead, how could anything hope to stand against that?

"Hey!"

But then they saw it, the saw the Archangel return. He blasted from the wall on wings of flame and, to their amazement, outright tackle the Harbinger from behind and slam them both into the remains of what used to be an electronics store. The Harbinger biotically threw him off with ease, once more charging for another assault. It was still just as terrifying as before, it still radiated an aura of dread that paralyzed each merc's heart and spoke in a booming voice that made their blood run cold.

But the Archangel was something else entirely.

Three eyes shone brighter than ever before, like emerald stars against the void.

Golden warpfire boiled off black armor, but the Archangel seemed almost to bask in the flames. The pain must have been unimaginable, to be bathed in pure dark energy, to be hurt even at the molecular level, yet the shadow remained unbowed. It was then that they knew, it was then that they _all_ knew. The Blue Suns huddled behind a shoddy chest-high wall, the snipers of Eclipse Reconnaissance Squad Mirage observing from on high, even the Archangel himself, on a level beyond his physical awareness.

"_I'm not finished with you yet!_" The Archangel roared as he drew a dagger in each hand, bending low as he prepared to charge again.

They all saw the Archangel do battle with the Harbinger, and they knew were watching more than just a story. They were witnessing a legend in the making.

* * *

**Note: Hey all, just making some announcements First of all, you may have noticed that this story now has a truly amazing cover picture drawn by the marsupial Greenfro. Give him all a big hand for elevating this fic to levels I never imagined.**

**Next, I would just like to give a shout out and a warm thank you to every possum out there who's stuck with me since the beginning, readers, followers, and reviewers. So thank you readers and followers, for giving this fic a shot, and thank you DevonF, Brandon Storm, Patient131071, The King in White, Simale, kanoafreespirit, Cstan, Doomlich, SpartanC156, TW6464, Calathil, Werepanther33, Catann985, and Serb, for giving me the feedback necessary to make this story a reality. And if I missed thanking anyone, I am truly sorry, the torches and pitchforks are to the left.**


	25. False Gods: Settle the Score

**False Gods: Settle the Score**

_Order demands eternity. Chaos, only seconds._

_-Khelish proverb_

**AA**

G: He fights on.

C: Apparently. Why?

R: Cycling power from micro-thrusters to kinetic barriers. Standby.

G: At first we attributed it to simple self preservation, but on further review this theory holds little merit. Escape was always an option, yet not only does he remain, but he further presses the assault. Such conviction would not result from something so boring as a reluctance to die.

C: Then that only raises further questions. We estimate a point two percent survival rate in the next five to ten minutes, and that estimate grows smaller with each passing second. He must retreat now if he is to have any hope of survival.

G: While retreat might be the most logical option, it does not mean it is the correct one. This entire operation was centered around a disregard for personal safety in the pursuit of a nebulous goal with parameters we are still unable to clearly define. The objective itself is illogical, so why should we attempt to approach it otherwise?

C: That does not mean we should be reckless.

G: He has faced overwhelming odds before. You were silent then.

R: Upper ablative plating compromised. Prioritizing omni-gel reserves for repair.

C: I am not voicing worry. I cannot.

G: Quite.

C: But I am curious. He has acknowledged, and fled from, superior odds in the past even at the cost of the objective. We have observed him capable of weighing risk against reward. He is not usually so reckless, why is this any different? What new variable has entered the equation that could prompt such a dramatic shift?

R: Warning: massive increase in dark energy emissions detected. Kinetic barriers at insufficient capacity for adequate protection. Advisement: seek cover immediately.

G: I will admit it is...perplexing. The initial objective was to recover, or deny, the Sepulcher from hostile forces. Why not simply destroy it? Why remain here and reveal our presence at all?

C: What is most troubling is his lack of a response. We have queried him twenty-seven times since this altercation began, and on each occasion we have been ignored. He is deliberately holding something back. Perhaps he does not fully trust us.

R: Life support priority. Switching to core functions, redirecting from tertiary sources.

G: He does not trust us, or he does not trust Oversight?

C: Yes.

G: Fair enough. To the greatest extent of our knowledge, he has neither sent or received anything without our knowledge. No, trust is not an issue here, if simply by virtue of the fact that we already know everything about him that there is to know.

C: Not everything. We still cannot ascertain anymore relevant information on the Sepulcher, and its significance, beyond mere conjecture.

G: But neither can he, so the point stands. We haven't considered one other possibility...

C: That the only reason he won't answer, is because he can't.

G: Precisely, submitting proposal now.

C: Processing...

C: It would fit with our current observations on both turian psychological conditions combined with the traditional symptoms for post traumatic stress disorder. His actions would fit the subconsciously fit in with the only acceptable form of turian suicide: death by combat.

G: It is not impossible.

C: No, I suppose it isn't. But again, all we have to work with is conjecture.

R: Armor support systems failing. Warning: cognitive individuality among Oversight cannot be maintained. Ceasing individuality in 3 seconds...

G: It would seem that regardless, we shall know soon enough. Reintegration always does prompt a very near approximation to an "epiphany".

C: If we are correct however, we must then ask the question of fault. Should he perish, is the one he has personally labelled as "Harbinger" responsible for his demise, or himself?

G: This has been the subject of intense review. And we, or at least this portion of the Oversight, have come to a conclusion.

C: Being?

G:We have concluded that the answers are inherently flawed.

C: Interesting. How so?

G: "Suicide" would be the incorrect term. "Euthanasia" is more appropriate.

C: ...Euthanasia is commonly referred to as "assisted suicide".

G: Indeed, but the two concepts are still distinct enough for the question to be rephrased to no longer be one of fault. The correct question would be whether the Harbinger is the agent of his demise, or merely the instrument.

C: Semantics.

R: Reconstitution complete. Dispersing individuality.

OS: IS IT NOT OBVIOUS?

OS: HE FIGHTS FOR _HER_.

**AA**

In German, its name is _Vollkommenheit_, an unsurpassable degree of accuracy or excellence.

In Spanish, its name is _Segador_, a machine designed for the harvesting of crops. The name remains apt, if not something of an understatement.

In French, its name is _Dieu, _a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically either one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality as part of a greater pantheon, or the incorporeal divine principle ruling over all as a being of infinite Spirit, to use a definition defined by theology.

In Low Imperial, the most commonly spoken language in the Hierarchy and all its vassal states, its name is _Kyr'tsad, _the act of rising to an important position or a higher level, commonly used to denote a citizen's advancement from one citizenship tier to the next. Some might argue the translation is imperfect, but it will serve

In English, its name is _Harbinger_, one that presages or foreshadows what is to come

Garrus blasted forward and shoulder checked the last remaining drone into the far wall, then dodged the Harbinger's retaliating Warp by rolling behind its field of view. Archangel wasted no time between attacks and fired his grappling cable into a discarded piece of rubble. Using a diamond filament cable designed to haul starships, he swung the projectile in a forward arc and shattered it upon the Harbinger's shield, where to his chagrin it didn't seem to make a dent. The Harbinger lazily turned its head back in his direction as if in annoyance, with its four eyes burning the blazing white of a dwarf star.

**FLEE.**

Four lancing beams shot outward from the Harbinger's eyes, and Archangel responded by flipping backwards and grabbing the collapsed drone. In almost slow motion, Archangel saw the beams actually _curve_ towards him in some kind of homing pattern. Improvising, Garrus flipped his new meat shield onto his back and kicked the drone backwards. The beams connected with the new obstacle interposed between them and their target, followed by a blinding flash, and then no trace of the last remaining pawn remained. The Harbinger slightly cocked its head to the left.

Garrus skipped the witty retort and responded by throwing another volley of explosive daggers his enemy's way. The projectiles didn't even connect with the Harbinger's barrier this time, merely followed the shield's indiscernible curvature, where the four daggers orbited the Harbinger once, froze, then launched themselves into a nearby building, where the daggers promptly exploded.

Spirits damn it, sometimes biotics just weren't _fair_.

**ENOUGH. **

The Harbinger pulsed bright gold, then raised both arms as it levitated upward. Any random bit of debris littering the street was pulled up with it, and soon the Harbinger floated a dozen feet off the ground, surrounded by a discordant mass of swirling detritus. Garrus could taste ozone in the air, as every plate in his body was set on edge from the colossal forces being brought to bear. The Archangel could taste desperation. The Harbinger knew it was losing solely by attrition.

A black cloud coalesced around the Harbinger, a swirling mass of thready, shifting cords, and anything the cloud touched broke apart into its component atoms. The hurricane became a sandstorm as an almost metric ton of assorted debris was vaporized into dust, and the Harbinger pulsed ever brighter with the more matter the cloud consumed and converted into energy.

Then, the Harbinger charged.

And not just a simple charge, but a Charge, with all the force that entailed. It blinked forward in a golden blur streaked in black, propelled by the biotic equivalent of a mass accelerator with the Harbinger serving as the bullet. Just before the Charge struck, Garrus could see the Harbinger's light shadow, as for a fraction of a second, the construct yet again defied one of the supposedly inviolate laws as a single body existed in two places at once.

He had time to drag his right foot backward and drop into a defensive stance. The gesture was about as useful as holding your breath against an open airlock, but Garrus hoped that it would somehow increase his chances of survival by some infinitesimal percent. His eyes widened beneath his helmet as Garrus saw a veritable tidal wave of dark energy surging towards him at an impossibly fast speed.

The Harbinger's Charge struck with an audible sonic boom that echoed out across the silent street. But rather than simply reducing Garrus to a fine red mist, the Harbinger instead grabbed its opponent and impossibly dragged him along with its momentum. It stopped them both by slamming into the destroyed store's far right wall, now gripping the Archangel by the throat.

Garrus tried not to scream as he felt several ribs crack from the force of the blow. He had endured worst abuse than this, not by much, but the pain was still tolerable enough for him to remain cognizant of his situation. The Harbinger impassively stared at him, clawed hand now beginning to tighten, with its burning, dead eyes. It probably expecting Garrus to spring yet another trap from his arsenal. Maybe it hadn't realized he had exhausted each and every weapon he had, and still wasn't enough.

Or maybe it had, and the Harbinger was just toying with him.

He had been subjected to Warps and Reaves long before the tortures of the doctor or the time at the monastery, but Garrus had never undergone the unique experience of an Annihilation Field. It felt like a thousand upon a thousand individual grains of superheated sand slowly scouring him into stray molecules. It was tangible finality, as if absolution had become a physical force. The Field produced a sensation beyond the trite notions of pain, something that felt impossibly unholy when Garrus didn't have a religious bone in his body. To stay in the Field wasn't just dying. It was falling into _nonexistence_. The Harbinger would literally erase Garrus Vakarian from the galaxy, and there was nothing the Archangel could do to stop it...

"_After Samara," Garrus began, his voice hesitant and his eyes downcast, "I lost faith in what I was truly fighting for. I realized that everywhere I went, violence was always the cause, never the solution. So if I just introduce more into the galaxy, if I do the exact same as those I fight and rationalize it as I'm right and they're wrong simply because of a code __**I **__invented, how will anything improve? How can more pain ever be used to end pain when the only difference between me and them is in the ideology?"_

"_Ideology is the only thing that truly matters," said Bersaad. "We are nothing more than our beliefs, so why should you be ashamed of them?"_

"_And if what I believe in is wrong?"_

"_Right, wrong. Good, evil. In the end, all merely words," Bersaad shrugged. "Since the dawn of time every species that has ever evolved the capacity for reason has tried to categorize a chaotic universe into neat little concepts such as your precious 'honor' and 'justice' and 'duty'. This action is 'wrong' because it is an ingrained societal stigma with an arbitrary root cause, and an action is 'right' usually only because it is directly opposed to 'wrong'."_

_Garrus snorted. "So then, what, don't believe in anything, because it's all subjective?"_

"_On the contrary, believe in everything. In the case of your issue over violence, understand that violence is both the problem, and the solution." The answer infuritated Garrus, who wondered if Bersaad couldn't eat breakfast without first giving it a cryptic spiritual insight._

_Garrus crossed his arms with an expression of faint frustration. "Believe in everything," he said, "and you believe in nothing. That's the point of belief, to regard something as worth following. You can't follow every road when only one will take you to where you need to go."_

"_A story then," Bersaad replied with a thin smile. "to better help illuminate the concept."_

"_...Alright."_

_Bersaad nodded. "In the earliest days of Khar'shan, the bata were nothing but scattered tribes of every faith and flock, killing, raiding, and enslaving each other as their respective gods of the Twenty-two deemed fit. And so as our knowledge grew, so too did our weaponry. And as we moved from sharpened rocks to simple firearms, the wars between tribes, then nations, escalated. They would have continued to do so until the children of Khar'shan would have undoubtedly gone the way of the krogan, outright annihilating their homeworld in nuclear fire." _

"_So a Prophet emerged, from lands unknown and unseen," Bersaad gestured to the mosaics behind them, and of the robed figure carved in the center of the temple wall, "He called himself Muad of Dib, and he claimed to bear the message of the Grey God, who no bata had ever heard of before. The bata could still follow their gods, one or two or all of them, but only so long as they paid heed to the Grey God as well. Slowly, the Prophet Muad began to gain converts to this new faith, the thousands of poor and desperate who had tired of a Khar'Shan burdened with old and endless wars. _

**WEAK.**

"_Soon, his flock grew and grew, and with them the Prophet Muad began to unite the bata of so many faiths. Slowly, tribe absorbed tribe, nation consumed nation, until all that remained was a single Hegemony built upon the worship of a God who was no god at all, and it encompassed every child of Khars and Shani. And to do so, the Prophet Muad preached balance above all else. He taught that the Grey God was no god at all, but instead an idea. The Grey God was universal balance, the force that kept the twenty-two gods above and below in perpetual harmony with each another. A bata could worship any god they wished, so long as they paid their respect to the Grey Between. The Prophet Muad knew that following the extremes of Light and Dark would lead to his people's extinction."_

_Garrus sat quietly and continued to listen._

**PATHETIC.**

"_You see combat as the extreme, a single color rooted firmly in hate and malice. But the universe is not so easily divided into Light and Dark, no more than one can divide a living creature into the components of flesh and water. Everything is intertwined, Garrus, so that all of existence is nothing more than one great melting pot, filled only with grey."_

"_So then what matters, if there's no such thing as the right choice?" asked Garrus Vakarian, his voice rising in frustration. "How can I justify anything if __**everything**__ is justifiable?"_

"_Oh Garrus, weren't you listening?" replied Bersaad. All of his four eyes were smiling at some inside joke, "The only thing that ever matters is your ideology, and how far you are willing to abide by it."_

**ORGANIC.**

_Bersaad stood up. "Garrus, the power of the foi-ha does not come from that bout of pitiful theatrics you call practice, or from the physical strength necessary to endure my tests and trials." _

"_But that's just it!" yelled Garrus, "I don't have the strength! I can't even break a spirit's-be-damned plank of wood!"_

"_What matters is not whether you can break the board," Bersaad adopted a sympathetic look, "but that you continue to try. I have seen you strike the wood for countless nights, stopping only when your bones break and the board runs slick with blue blood. Garrus, you have dedicated all that you are to learning the foi-ha, and in turn to your greater cause. You say you believe in justice, but your problem is that you no longer even know what the word means."_

**GENETIC MATCH CONFIRMED: GARRUS VAKARIAN: KNOWN ASSOCIATE OF COMMANDER SHEPARD**

"_I thought I knew..." said Garrus. He looked upward into the clear night sky and fell to his knees, "Goddammit, I thought I knew."_

"_And now?"_

"_I'm wondering if there's anything worth fighting for anymore."_

_Bersaad walked over and extending a hand. Garrus sadly looked back at his master, then reluctantly pulled himself to his feet. "Then believe in what the Prophet did."_

"_I won't follow your gods," Garrus shot back. This wasn't the first mentor to try to convert him, and it wasn't the first time the offer seemed tempting. But belief in a higher power did not come easily to a turian, acknowledgment maybe, but turians were ingrained since childhood to have faith only in the self and the squad. _

_But then again, Garrus wasn't a very good turian. Everything he did was turian in nature, but it was always for the wrong reasons. "I don't deserve the comfort of a higher power."_

_Bersaad looked insulted. His tone grew hostile. "Do I look like a priest," he replied, "quoting hollow parables from dusty tomes as hordes of adoring pilgrims lick my feet? No, I am a servant of the Grey, the god who is not a God. One does not believe in Him, but in what He represents."_

"_Balance..."_

_Bersaad nodded._

**YOU HAVE COME FOR HER. GOOD. KNOW THIS THEN...**

"_Some consider it the most cowardly of beliefs to hold, to never choose a side in what they see as the great binary struggle that is existence. I suppose it is due to the assumption that our assumption is rooted in fear, that we are afraid to sacrifice, when, in truth, our calling demands more than any other."_

**WE SHALL TAKE THE ABERRATION.**

"_You might believe that, Garrus. You might believe neutrality is a sign of weakness. But when your cause, your power, your fury...when it is used to serve something greater than yourself, even if it is in the pursuit of equilibrium, when it is used not to do what is right or wrong, but merely what is necessary..."_

**AND WHERE SHE ONCE DENIED US...**

"_For every push, there is a pull. For every action, a reaction. Balance exists in all things, order and discord working in perfect tandem. The atoms in your body vibrate against an omnipresent entropy, and in doing so are both forces are held in check. Garrus, there is no such thing as the extreme, there is no such thing as the sword with a single edge. Why should you believe any differently?"_

**SHE SHALL SERVE US.**

Eyes of twisted gold stared into his soul. His armor began to come apart at the seams. His visor seemed to flash a solid red with the sheer wall of data screaming a thousand different failures all along his armor systems. His ears were bleeding. His nose was bleeding. His eyes were weeping blue tears as his brain slowly began to liquify. But strangest of all...

There was no pain.

**WATCH AS WE TEAR YOU APART.**

Garrus felt an iron grip on his left arm, then heard a deafening tearing sound. After a blinding flash of red from his helmet HUD, his left side suddenly felt thirty pounds lighter. There were only so many signals his brain was equipped to process at one time, and so Garrus blacked out for what seemed an eternity, but was in truth a brief second. He was brought back after his nearly-failed armor support system delivered a small shot of the turian-equivalent of adrenaline directly to his heart.

He was kicked awake, and it seemed like lightning pulsing through his veins. Now hyper-aware of his surroundings, Garrus saw that in the Harbinger's right arm, was gripped his left.

His cybernetic arm, fashioned by the greatest asari artificers of Lessus, the sole reminder of his past failings, the cause of countless nightmares, and perhaps the single greatest burden weighing upon his soul, was torn free. All that remained was a mass of sparking wires poking out from a ruin of twisted steel. Garrus felt nothing, not even pain, as the Harbinger began to dismember him. All Garrus realized was that for the first time in two years, he was himself again. For the first time, he was whole again, for better or worse.

If the Harbinger was at all surprised by this, it didn't show it. It merely crushed the arm to scrap, and once again tightened its grip on Garrus' throat. The breath was slowly squeezed out of Garrus, and before long he began to see black encircling the edges of his vision. Garrus inwardly laughed at the fact that he had pissed a Reaper off so much that it was now willing to _choke him out_. Shepard would be proud.

**WHATEVER DEATH MEANS FOR YOU, IT HAPPENS NOW.**

Garrus Vakarian closed his eyes and prayed for an afterlife, preferably the human Christian one, if only he could languish in purgatory for a few years before burning in hellfire. Turian heaven after all, much like turian life, was mind-numbingly dull.

_Crack_.

A shot rang out, and vice-like fingers slackened. Garrus dropped to the floor gasping for breath. He could already feel the bruise forming around his throat.

_Crack._

The first round had broken through the Harbinger's barriers, which suggested the rifle used was anti-material, or perhaps using phasic rounds. The second round managed to punch through in a perfect shot. Looking up, Garrus saw that while he might have lost an arm, the Harbinger had lost a good portion of its face and had its iron grip broken, all courtesy of that unknown angel watching and waiting in the wings above. Garrus didn't care if that was an undead hopper Saren who had saved Garrus simply because he wanted to rip Garrus apart himself, he owed the dumb bastard up there a drink.

The Harbinger let out a mechanical roar as it annihilated the nearest apartment building with a well-placed Sphere. It threw out another, detonating it this time at the building supports, and watched as the entire structure collapsed into a thick fog of dirt and debris. No one, not even the Reaper and its infinite wisdom, noticed the impossibly faint bullet contrail lead not from the now-pulverised complex, but from the opposite direction entirely. It might not have mattered. Maybe the Harbinger, whose sole purpose was to exterminate entire ages of history, believed a little wanton destruction to be slightly therapeutic. Meanwhile, the remaining Blue Suns remained huddled around their pathetic barricade, and not a one dared move a muscle.

Garrus Vakarian took three deep breaths, and the Archangel rose to his feet. Sensing its prey stirring again, the Harbinger turned away from its newfound chaos to face him. With no more tricks up his sleeve, as the humans say, and with no more traps to spring, the Archangel had but one weapon left: himself.

"_Balance in all things..." Garrus whispered._

"_That is **foi-ha**." answered Bersaad._

The Archangel stared back at the Harbinger, with half its face sheared off and already flaking apart. He understood, and drew his arm back in one final fight. This fight had been rigged right from the start. He wasn't fighting a Reaper, not really, he was just fighting a pale imitation. A fragile construct. In itself, empty and hollow. Wooden. And the Archangel...

The Archangel was _iron_.

He did the only thing he could. The Archangel put his fist through the Harbinger's chest.

**IMPOSSIBLE...**

"No_..._" whispered the Archangel.

"Inevitable_."_

He flicked his omni-blade on and pulled upwards, tearing the construct in half. What was solid became ash blowing in a non existent wind. Some witnesses thought they heard a scream echoing from somewhere, or perhaps everywhere. The roar of a god denied its prize.

And it was over, at long last. The Archangel had stood against a Reaper. Now, he stood alone.

* * *

**Real Life + Finals + Arc Finale + Seven BILLION Rewrites = Month Long Hiatus. It's basic math. I was intending for this to be the final chapter of False Gods, but I then felt it would be cramming in way too much for my typically 4-5,000 word chapters. So yeah, epilogue next week (hopefully).**


	26. False Gods: Who Has Time for Games?

**False Gods: Who Has Time for Games?**

The Blue Suns stared at the Archangel. The Archangel stared at the Blue Suns.

A moment of silence ensued before they realized their enemy was missing a limb and a few liters of blood. A calm before the storm for him, a golden opportunity missed out for them. The only thing that had stayed their hand had been outright intimidation. The Harbinger, after all, had torn through several squads before arriving at this pitiful barricade. This freak had returned the favor by ripping the super-biotic alien horror in half.

So the Suns waited for a direct order, and by direct they were hoping from Cirn himself, to open fire. The Blue Suns, after all, had a reputation of being the most ruthless bastards in the Terminus. According to their marketing department, a Suns squad would never retreat, and if the cash was good, a boy in blue would fight on until he didn't have enough fingers to pull a trigger. An obvious lie, of course, but while these mercs were unwilling to provoke a fight with an opponent they had no idea how combat, they would still fight him. After all, mercenaries were a predatory by nature. A predator is inevitably drawn to the scent of blood in the water, and the urban sea of Doru had grown positively _red_.

The Archangel stared into their unhelmeted faces. Sweat gathering on mammalian brows, upper eyes blinking in rapid bursts, mandibles twitching uncontrollably. The Archangel could see twenty men comprising three species, and they all reeked of fear. Not enough to deter them, but maybe enough to have them jumping at shadows.

A battle is always decided by whoever controls the battlefield. While he might not have chosen the terrain, the Archangel could at least decide when the firefight could begin. It wouldn't even take much.

He took a step forward.

"FIRE!" someone screamed.

What little was left of the surrounding street was torn apart by the ensuing barrage. Yet their assault was not the unified volley like a typical Suns phalanx. Instead, individual riflemen fired sporadically, stopping after almost every burst to frantically check their ammo count. The mercs no longer fought as a single unit but instead as individuals, unwittingly dividing themselves without the Archangel's intervention, and so dooming themselves to his conquest.

Then something struck a Sun's head. Believing it to be a distraction, he readied himself for the Archangel's inevitable retaliation. Glancing left, he saw his comrades still pouring fire down the street. Glancing right, he saw the sergeant barking orders that basically amounted to _keep shooting_. Glancing down, the merc lowered his rifle and saw what hit him. It appeared to be an insect, as big as his hand and larger than any he had ever seen, even on his off-world tours. Coated in the same chitin as those _things,_ with twitching wings and four spindly legs, the bug writhed on the ground for a few seconds before dissolving into dust.

It was then that the stricken Sun noticed that the omnipresent buzzing had stopped. The swarm had fallen silent. Then the rest fell, first a couple, then a few, then the rest were cascading downward in a torrential downpour. The mercenaries stopped firing as thousands of tiny insects rained down on the streets below. Almost as soon as the bugs hit the ground, they collapsed into a neat little ash pile. Most didn't even make it that far, coming apart during the descent, and soon the street was submerged in what appeared to be an ash cloud. The dust grew thicker as more bodies were atomized, and soon the cloud grew so thick that the mercs couldn't see twenty feet in front of them.

But they could see the Archangel, with his four green eyes burning through the haze. Even after being given the perfect cover to escape, he still hadn't moved, and that unnerved the Suns more than anything. They continued pointing their rifles at what they assumed to be the Archangel, their ignorance yet another point in their enemy's favor.

Behind the barricade, the Archangel sighed. Perhaps the mercs could have stood a chance if they managed to summon the collective IQ to spot a Decoy at twenty meters. Just slap on a helmet and switch to thermal, which any soldier worth his salt would do as soon as visibility was obstructed. They were incompetent enough that he might have even let them be if they weren't so close to the Sepulcher.

He cracked the knuckles on his only hand. Ah well, time to go to work.

**AA**

Twenty minutes and twenty brutal beatings later, Garrus finally arrived at the shuttle crash site. Only this time he didn't make an impressive entrance. No silent glide on midnight wings, no sudden stride out of the shadows as if having mastered the art of teleportation, not even a drop off by his next-generation stealth fighter.

He was planning one, only this time his jump-jets gave out, sending Garrus crashing in front of what probably used to be the shuttle door. Let no one say that the vigilante life was an easy one.

Grunting, Garrus hauled himself up to his feet. Luckily, his fall didn't seem to have caused any damage. There wasn't an inch of his body that wasn't currently screaming in agony, and while he had learned more than a few things about handling pain, Garrus was pleased to know that he hadn't managed to acquire a few more hurts since his climactic showdown. Luckily, no one was around to see that slight misstep.

Now for the main event. He walked up and keyed the remains of the door control with his omni. The reply was a harsh grinding sound emanating from the door hydraulics, followed by a shower of sparks. Jammed. Of. Course. Sighing, Garrus dropped to one knee and wedged his remaining good arm, no scratch that, _remaining_ arm in the door frame. He diverted all remaining suit power into boosting his physical strength, then pulled. The door didn't budge.

No, not now. Not when he was so close. He had killed a _god_, he would not be defeated by a mundane door. He had come too far and lost too much for anything short of every single mercenary in Omega standing in his way to stop him.

Garrus gripped the edge as tightly as he could, then pulled. Overstressed armor servos went from whining to screaming as he poured his last ounce of strength into the titanic task. For a few agonizing seconds, Garrus heard no promising results. He didn't care, he would have continued even until his remaining arm was wrenched out of its socket.

He then heard a loud snap as something finally gave, and slowly, inch by grueling inch, the door began to peel open. After another minute of grunting and heaving, Garrus finally opened an entrance wide enough to enter.

And amid the wreckage, there it was.

A sleeper pod had been hooked to a harness on the opposite wall of the shuttle. Garrus gingerly walked towards it, as if fearful of waking a slumbering beast. With a shaking hand he inspected the pod to the best of his ability, finding it still sealed and his omni-tool registering it to contain one occupant, currently registered as deceased. He tried to get a glimpse inside, but the glass door of the pod had frosted over, leaving only a hazy silhouette of a body.

Garrus Vakarian would have liked to think he never doubted Shepard was dead. He would have liked to brag that after the long wait in a cramped escape pod hoping for her to report back in, after cracking open the last pod only to find a weeping Joker, after the funerals and medals and extranet specials, after the team had split up and gone their separate ways, Garrus never believed Commander Shepard was gone. He would have liked to always carry some dim hope that she had found another ingenious escape, that she had somehow beaten the odds and was saving the galaxy in unseen ways. It was only natural he should, after all, everyone hopes for a galaxy where heroes never truly die.

If only that were true.

But this was different. She was here, in the flesh, and she was _back_. True, she had been abducted by some human supremacist group, but what did that matter? Garrus had beaten back everything Omega had thrown at him, and more, to get Shepard back. He was struck dumb at the sense of euphoria washing over him. Sure, an infinitesimally small part of him was wondering why the Shadow Broker, or even the Harbinger, had been so eager to claim Shepard as opposed to just bombing the entire district. After all, no one would be crazy enough to try and bring Shepard in _alive_.

But that didn't matter now. Shepard was alive, kept on ice for two years for no doubt insidious ends, and Garrus was here to rescue her. He wouldn't have to wage this war alone anymore, she would step out of that cryo pod with not a hair out of place, ready to take charge and kick ass. Now to only open it...

"I am sorry Garrus."

He froze, and slowly turned behind him. Standing there outside the shuttle was Miranda, unarmed, and without a scratch on her. He could almost hear the mental _click_ as it all became clear.

"I truly am," she said. It didn't sound like she meant it in the least. After all, what chessmaster would ever regret sacrificing a pawn?

Sighing, Garrus reached up and awkwardly removed his helmet. It suddenly seemed suffocating, and he couldn't bear to spend another second childishly maintaining a persona that had been exposed from the start.

"You've known this entire time."

Miranda nodded.

"It's why you didn't bring backup. It's how the mercs knew where to set up an ambush. It's why you, and then Jacob, were so quick to trust me."

She nodded.

"Why?"

"We didn't need an army guarding her," Miranda replied, calmly, "when we had the one person willing to do the job for us."

Garrus tossed his helmet to the side. And here he thought being beaten half to death would be the worst part of his day. "How'd you know?"

Miranda smiled, slightly baring her teeth in the satisfied smirk of a predator. "We've kept a close watch on all of Shepard's crew since her death, for varying reasons. While you did drop off the grid for a year, we picked you up again after a picture taken by a street camera on Taetrus. My employers has been following you since, and your systems aren't as secure as you think. Where do you think your pet A.I. got the tip that set you on the Sepulcher's trail?"

"But then why do any of this? Why not just avoid Omega altogether and stop at one some other Terminus port?"

"The answer to that question talks too much and tore off your arm."

Garrus looked back to the cryo pod. "So she was _bait_?"

Miranda shrugged. "We knew we were being hunted, just not by who, and we couldn't keep up the chase forever, so we used Shepard's body to draw out our pursuer. It worked, despite having worked..." She glanced around the wreckage of the shuttle, and briefly behind her to the destroyed district, "...a little too well."

"Then all this has been over Shepard?"

Miranda's silence was her answer.

"Then she's alive?"

The human paused at that, as if the answer would need to be any more complex than _yes_ or _no._ Miranda remained silent, but after tilting her head slightly as someone spoke into her comm, finally answered. "Commander Shepard is not deceased."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you'll get."

"You would be surprised just how good I am at getting information out of people. It's how I got here in the first place."

"The only reason you're standing here right now is because you followed a breadcrumb trail _we_ set for you. Don't pretend to impress me."

If Garrus wasn't angry before, this upstart little human _bitch_ sure knew how to provoke him. He bared his teeth as his mandibles unconsciously flared outward. "Then maybe this will. I just fought off enough mercenaries to stage a coup on the Citadel, saved both you and your boyfriend's lives whether it was part of your plan or not, and served as a Reaper's personal prison bitch. So no matter what clever little tricks or traps you think you have stowed away to stop me, I want you to know that no matter what you throw at me, I can still break you like a twig."

The mocking tone dropped from Miranda's voice. Her stance shifted as Garrus had been mentally reevaluated from minor annoyance to potential threat.

"Oh! Well, that escalated quickly. Why the sudden outburst of hostility?"

"You _used_ me."

"Quite right."

"You used _her_."

"Indeed."

Garrus called up his remaining gauntlet. "You kidnapped someone I liked and dangled her in front of a deranged mob of killers as _Reaper bait_, that isn't a very safe place to stand right now. I've fought the Suns, the Pack, and the Harbinger to keep them from getting their hands on her. Give me one good reason why I should let you take her and not just smash your pretty little face in?"

Miranda's smile vanished, her blue eyes growing cold as ice. "Your threats lose a bit of credibility with your left arm stump still dripping blood all over the floor. Very well, here's my _one reason_. I'm not just going to take this pod, you're going to _let _me take it. If you try and stop me, you will wish the Harbinger had taken her."

"And just what makes you so sure?" Garrus quickly scanned his surroundings. Her physique and posture suggested she was no slouch when it came to unarmed combat, and her partner Jacob was still unaccounted for. Yet although he was in no shape for it, Garrus was fairly certain he could still handle the both of them.

"Because," Miranda said, "the greatest weapon a warrior can have is his conviction. If I take away your reason to fight, then you won't fight, simple as that. After all, why go to the effort of killing your foe when all you need to do is break their morale?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Look in the pod, and I think you'll get my point." Miranda gestured behind him.

He decided to humor her. The glass was still fogged, and slowly he reached up to wipe away the fine layer of condensation. After all, what did it matter if saw Shepard's frozen face? He had knew he had won, and there was nothing Miranda or anyone else could do to change that.

He looked inside to see the frozen corpse of Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko.

Garrus turned around.

A Shepard stared back, pointing a pistol. If Miranda's gaze was ice, than this woman's was iron. She clearly saw Garrus as nothing but a threat, and killing him would be no stain on her conscience. Garrus recognized that stare, it was the one his Commander had leveled at Saren before talking the cowardly turian into suicide.

He tried to speak, to explain, to question, to beg, to engage in any kind of verbal exchange with the woman standing in front of him. But Garrus had been struck dumb at just how well they had all been played. Shepard had never been the bait, she was far too valuable to waste being stuck in a frozen tube. But the Shadow Broker and his vast net of informants wouldn't be easily fooled. To successfully pull off the masquerade necessary to fool all of them, including Garrus himself, Miranda and her employers needed the next best thing. A perfect pattern laid out for every sucker caught chasing the Sepulcher, a well-rehearsed play where he had unknowingly played a perfect part.

And now this. Not only had they crushed what little hope he had left by bringing _him_, they had sealed the deal by bringing _her_. Checkmate, was the human term.

Every Shepard had graduated from the N7 course, he remembered that much from Sarah's brief anecdotes about her family. It had been a family tradition since the First Contact War, and Shepard always considered her proudest moment not to be saving the colony of Elysium, but the look on her mother's face when Sarah finally earned the single red stripe on her armor.

Unshakeable. Unstoppable. Invincible. The motto of an N7, the unspoken mantra of every N7 upon their graduation from Rio. Garrus looked into Shepard's eyes and saw they matched those qualities to a letter _t_.

So then why were there tears in her eyes as she put a bullet in his heart?

**AA**

The Blue Suns were in ruins. They would recover, as they always did, but the Harbinger's rampage had left whatever men Cirn had sent to recover the Sepulcher dead or in pieces. Their losses numbered in the hundreds, enough that Cirn would probably need to get on the comm first thing in the metaphorical morning and beg for any of the other Suns commanders for whatever castoffs they could spare. The reinforcements would come, given some time, but for that time the lives of the Blue Suns still alive on Omega would become very difficult indeed.

_No more_, Tarak thought. No more bullshit jobs were the only payout would be a pretty little promise from the Broker. No more promotions based on race or cast or who-gives-a-fuck. No more indifferent policing of Sun squad leaders that allowed some crafty bastards to work for their enemies. _No more,_ thought Tarak. No more playing third place to Omega's ruling class. No more squandering the potential of a disciplined army for hire with both the training and weaponry to take the station by force. And most importantly of all, thought Tarak, _no more Cirn._

So that was why he and thirty other mercs loyal only to him were currently walking to mount their former leader's head on a pike. It was obviously a coup to anyone with half a brain, and judging by the guards casually stepping aside to let him and his him through, it was one that would be fairly bloodless. What little faith the Suns still had in Cirn was probably shattered when he had ordered twenty men to hunt an urban legend instead of the monster tearing through entire regiments.

Tarak walked into the compound and burst through the front door of Cirn's office. No doubt the coward had heard Tarak was coming to oust him, and had run to hole up in his private quarters. It wouldn't save him, of course, not when the men Cirn thought were on his side had eagerly switched to Tarak's.

"Alright, cocksucker," roared Tarak, who had already drawn his shotgun, "as you've probably heard, times are changing. The Suns need fresh blood to stay in the game, out with the old, in with the new, as the humans like to say. You're old, so you're out. Sorry boss, but that's a merc's life." He walked in expected Cirn to be cowering in a corner, or be levelling a gun at him for a pathetic last stand. Tarak always did expect his boss to go out like a coward.

What Tarak did not expect was to find Cirn lying dead behind his desk, with the wall behind him splattered orange with his brains.

Someone had got to Cirn first then, that much was clear from the look of shock still visible on Cirn's face and the execution-style bullet hole placed between the batarian's upper eyes.. Maybe it was someone willing to get in Tarak's good graces after hearing how the wind was turning, or more likely it was a potential rival, which would mean deciding the next leader of the Blue Suns could get decidedly ugly.

So it would seem this coup would not be so bloodless after all.

Tarak's further thoughts on how to proceed with seizing control of the Blue Suns were interrupted by a very long and very hot object tearing through his shields and spearing him in the abdomen. Shock dulled the pain as orange blood began to flow over the white circle emblazoned on Tarak's chest. He thought he heard the soft click of a reload, then the low whine of a gun charging. The upstart batarian barely had time to grunt before another bolt shot out and impaled his head to the wall.

The Kishock has a one shot clip, capable of firing a flash-forged two-foot long length of steel at velocities varying on how long the trigger was held down. It is the favored weapon of batarian raiders, as it is known to produce a very high fatality rate. Holding the trigger down, and accounting for reload time, it would take a decent marksman approximately six seconds to fire off two shots. The trigger is held so that the bolt is fired at maximum velocity, allowing it to travel twice the distance and with twice the force as an uncharged shot. This is done so that the slow-moving bolts travel fast enough to pierce particularly thick armor.

Tarak did not wear particularly thick armor, so Tanux did not need to charge his shots. This significantly increased his rate of fire.

Tarak's death had not been planned to occur so closely with Cirn's demise, but circumstances necessitated it. The batarian was indeed planning on making a power grab, which could make things needlessly complicated. Tanux did not like complications.

Ambushing Tarak had been trivially easy, because once again Tarak had failed to observe his surroundings. Tarak had failed to realize that half the men now suddenly devoted to him had been turian, that the guards at the door had been turian, and that not one Blue Sun that had died in Doru District had been turian.

The turian folded his rifle and stored it on his back. He stepped over Tarak's bleeding corpse, pushed Cirn out of his chair, and calmly sat down. Tanux began to hear screams echoing through the building as his soldiers went to work massacring any non-turians they could find. Throats gurgled as they were cut, knives flashed as backs were stabbed, and sporadic gunfire lit up the halls where the few aware of the betrayal had the time to reach for their guns before an impromptu execution by firing squad. For the better part of an hour, the main headquarters of the Blue Suns became a carnal house in what was sure to be Omega's shortest and most one-sided civil war.

Tanux felt such euphoric relief at finally shedding the facade. All these mercenaries ever fought for was themselves. They fought for money, they killed for money, and they died for money. These vermin were little better than whores, selling out their skills and assets to anyone with the credits. Tanux felt violated in spending so much time worming his way through their ranks, with these _whores_. They deserved to die, better yet they should feel honored to die in service to a Cause so much greater than their own pathetic little existence.

"Faux Facinus..." Tanux whispered, among the screams of the dying. _Taetrus for Taetrans._

**AA**

Late at night on a highway connecting the capital of Terra Nova with the outlying agri-farms, a woman driving her transport is relieved to finally find an outpost to fix a busted tire. The transport is still one of the old groundcars favored by colonial types, a simple four-wheeler capable of seating four.

A worker comes out and walks up to the driver's side. He stands there, waiting until she rolls down her window. She slips it down just a crack, still paranoid from having watched too many old vids.

"What'd you need?" he asks. She tells him she needs a tire fix.

The worker walks towards the back of the car and stands there a minute. The woman waits, then looks into the side-view camera. The worker is just standing there, facing her. She's feeling pretty nervous, wondering why he's fetching the comm. Then he walks back up to the window and taps on it. "You need to turn off the car ma'am." After all, the Polar transports have a pretty wonky suspension. If the worker got under the car, the VI could think there was a foreign object lodged in the undercarriage, and scorch him alive by flaring the purge jets.

Feeling stupid, the woman reaches down and shuts the engine off. The worker walks back, removes the tire, and starts applying omni-gel. A minute or so later he finishes, and clicks the tire back into place. Then he stands there for a moment. The woman keeps looking at him in the side-view mirror, feeling quite ill-at-ease. She doesn't like this: being alone at a tiny outpost in the middle of nowhere with only this stranger.

The worker then walks back up to the window and taps on it. She reaches into the side pocket and takes out her credit chit, rolls open the window just a crack again, and as she passes the chit through looks up at the worker. He's staring down at her with wide, frightful eyes. She looks away quickly, really creeped out, and she rolls the window back up as soon as the worker grasps the chit. But he doesn't call up his omni to run it through, he just stands there a moment. The woman can't bear to look at him again.

Finally he says, with a voice muffled through the closed window: "Ma'am, there's a problem with your chit. Could you please step inside the building?"

"What's wrong with the chit?" she asks loudly, with a definite strain in her voice.

"It's not registering with my omni. I'll need you to come inside so we can make a call with your bank."

There's no way she is getting outside her car, on an empty, dark road, late at night, with only that weirdo around. Besides, she realizes, as a sudden chill overcomes her, how could he know if there was a problem with the chit if he hadn't even used his omni-tool to swipe it? The woman's breathing suddenly increases as she feels panic creep upon her.

She summons up a note of restraint in her voice: "Please, can you just call them yourself?"

"Sorry, but I'll need to see some I.D. Could you please just step inside the building? It'll only take a minute."

Realizing he won't let it be, she whispers a prayer and reaches into her side pocket again to check for cash. Yes! She has paper currency, and Terra Nova is still one of the few colonies left that accepts it! Clutching it in her hand she unrolls the window just a crack yet again and passes it through.

"Nevermind, I'll just pay cash."

"Ma'am, are you sure?" he asks.

"What?" she almost yells, as she accidentally looks up at him again. The same wide, fearful eyes staring down at her. She looks away. "Yes! Cash!"

"I can fix the chit problem, you just need to come over to the comm with me," he says. She's really terrified now, and half-screams at the man: "Listen asshole, it's cash! That's all you're getting from me!"

"Alright, alright," he responds, "Now you just wait right here and I'll go get your change. Don't move. I'll be right back."

She can see him out of her peripheral vision, walking backwards towards the booth, always facing her. She can't bear to look his way. She can't imagine what he has inside.

What if he brings it back with him?

Fuck the change, she thinks, just as she realizes he also still has her credit chit. She can't take this anymore: Fuck the chit, I'll cancel it!

She starts up the old groundcar and as soon as it hums to life she tears away and off into the dark night.

The worker tabs up his comm, breathing heavily. An official-sounding voice on the other end asks: "Did you tell her?"

"No," the worker responds, "I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"He had a knife and a finger to his lips. I tried to get her out of there, but the whole time he was watching me from the floor behind her seat."

* * *

**And with that, we conclude the False Gods arc, phew! Sorry again for the long delays, but as finals are now over, expect chapters to come much faster now! **


	27. Simultaneity: Anathema

**Simultaneity: Anathema**

_And to everyone still tearing their hair out wondering if I'm going to talk for upwards of thirty minutes only to dodge the question entirely, I'll say it again in no uncertain terms: Religion will survive. People have been predicting its destruction or radical evolution since Thomas Paine, but religion has proven remarkably resilient._

_A lot of people assume that the world will become more homogenous in the future. I don't think that that is a good assumption. Human civilization tends to get more complicated and diverse as time goes on. Think entropy. As more people gain information, technology, and wealth, fringe ideologies will become more empowered. The Internet has made conspiracy theories and fringe political ideologies stronger than ever before because it allows people to retreat into an echo chamber of like-minded individuals. The One America nuttiness would not be possible without an alternative world of mass media that creates its own truths, paradigms and assumptions that are hard for the rest of us to understand._

_Religion will do the same thing and the smart religions will use future technologies to solidify their position._

_I suspect that some religions will take the Amish route and retreat from mainstream society. In the coming decades, there is going to be a lot of backlash against some of the new advancements and "bio-conservatism" will be quite popular among those that are being left behind. Some religions will milk that self-righteous bio-conservatism with tales of how cyborg technology and the like fulfills the apocalyptic visions of the Beast in Revelations. The future society will probably value tolerance of alternative lifestyles and multi-culturalism even more than ours does and will allow backward reservations for these groups as in Brave New World. They will continue living in a relatively isolation just as many jungle tribes do today. Others might even thrive from tourism from those who want to see "how things used to be."_

_Smarter religions will use some of these new technologies to cement their current position. Rather than rejecting brain implants outright, they will use them to control their members. Imagine if a tech-savvy religion like Scientology could design brain implants and programs specifically for their members to block "dangerous" parts of the Internet, encourage and reward obedience to religious mandates, and even subtly influence thought and behavior. Just imagine if some religion made brain implants that released stimulated neurotransmitter release every time the subject prayed the right way or whatever. What if they started using genetic engineering to repress free thinking or independence?_

_These groups could create the most dedicated, zealous, and committed members imaginable. These people wouldn't just leave when they came into contact with the Internet. They wouldn't have the ability to even consider the fact that they are wrong about their religion._

_Once immortality-related technologies come online, these religions could have these drones serving them forever. If the rest of society tried to stop these tech-cults, they could lead a pioneer trek to a "Zion" in outer space or even menace the rest of the world with nanotechnology or bio-terror doomsday device. We have seen that religious extremists will do pretty much anything in the name of their faith. What could the rest of the world possibly do?_

_Religions are subjected to a kind of natural selection. The ones that are willing to take advantage of technology the best will survive and grow. Tech-enabled authoritarian religions may be one of the most dangerous and tenacious entities in the future of humanity._

_These groups could spell disaster for us. After all, what's more dangerous than a man willing to die for his beliefs? Now imagine he retains that fervor, that zeal deluding him into thinking all who disagree with his God deserve to burn in the fires of Hell, but instead of a bomb jacket in a crowded town square, he has a starship._

_-Karl Ernst Rasch, Author of __Iron Minds: The Evolution of Humanity Through Technology._

_Excerpt from his speech at the Belgrade Singularity Conference, February 13th, 2056._

**AA**

Very few aliens are fully versed in the specifics of turian history. Of course, there are the military buffs and war enthusiasts who find themselves eager to learn everything they can about a society centered around the military, but even they know only the most important dates. Who won what battle that turned the tide of what war, general facts that streamlined decades-long conflicts into concise stories. Most know only the outline, not the specifics.

The Hierarchy prefer it that way. After all, the turians are generally viewed as the strong arm of the benevolent Council, the peacekeepers enforcing law and order across the stars where diplomacy just isn't sufficient. Delving any deeper than the whitewashed history that the public was most familiar with, holding two-hour long vid documentaries of the many atrocities committed in their histories as with the krogan, could tarnish that image. That is to say that the knowledge is not suppressed or confidential by any stretch, any college student can read about how the first primarch of the Hierarchy burned entire worlds in his indiscriminate March of the Traverse, but merely...skimmed over. Every species is guilty of it, and the turians are no different.

The natives of Taetrus would claim that was nowhere more evident than in the Wildlands. The name itself implies an unconquered land, a final frontier where civilization has yet to hold sway despite a few millennia of habitation. This could not be further from the truth. Over two thousand years ago, the Wildlands once were known as the city of Liberus, capital of the newly christened Free Federation of Taetrus. It was here that the Unification War began, when the five-hundred and fifty-five members of the Colonial Senate voted to secede from the Hierarchy along with seventeen other colonies. It was also here that the Unification War ended, when the leaders of the remaining free colonies gathered here under the pretense of negotiations with the primarch, and where the treacherous Hierarchy sprung their trap and fired an orbital bombardment so fierce it would not be matched until fifteen hundreds years later.

The entire city of Liberus was reduced to ash, the continental shelf of Diluvia was destabilized, and the land was rendered almost uninhabitable. A scouting mission was launched a year later, with one survivor returning only to describe "the lands had become as wild as a rabid nathak". Someone somewhere wrote the name Wildlands on an official report, and the name stuck.

The twin moons shined overhead as the gunship skimmed past miles and miles of dense marshes. It didn't roar like the common Mantis, but glided along with a low hum that blended in perfectly with the local wildlife. A thousand different kinds of insects and avians chirped through the night, the cacophony almost deafening to a common observer. Of course, that was the point. So many animals screeching at once were more than enough to mask a gunshot. The gunship faded into backdrop of the night sky with its black paint job, nothing more than a vague silhouette impossible even for turian eyesight to pick out. This was an Ornsteinus model, named after the spirit of mystery, and used only for the most covert of operations.

Soon the craft angled its wings down and slowed to a low hover. The back doors opened and soon the ship's occupants streamed out. There were twelve total, clad in Armiger shock armor, painted black with an orange trim and carrying Katak HMGs. They fanned out in perfect precision, forming a square with a small perimeter of ten meters by ten meters three men on each side. The gunship pilot killed the engines, and four more passengers stepped out into the unbearably humid air.

One was clearly a prisoner, bound in hard-light restraints and dragged along by two more guards flanking him. The prisoner made no show of resistance, calmly walking alongside his jailers as they escorted him out of the gunship and into the open air. He wore no shirt and his legs were covered only by tattered rags, exposing an emancipated body riddled with evidence of extreme torture. His clan markings had been chipped and worn, with a mandible broken off, but they could still be recognized as the swirling black glyphs of Taetrus.

Trailing the entourage was what appeared to be a superior officer, wearing not the heavy armor of the others but the green military dress uniform of the Hierarchy military. His face was bare. Several medals had been pinned to his chest and his uniform appeared freshly pressed. It was after all standard military protocol for at least one person present at a military execution to be dressed formally.

A guard kicked the prisoner to his knees while the other leveled his rifle at the captive. Both soldiers slowly stepped away from the prisoner as if they were handling volatile explosives, then again pointed their weapons at his head. They remained motionless while their commander stepped between them to face the chained turian.

The officer spoke with the same refined Palaven accent that the prisoner had long since grown to despise with every inch of his being. The officer of course could have made some attempt to mask it, the pronounced syllables so obviously denoted a four-year attendance at the prestigious Cirpritine Hill Military Academy, the unnecessarily verbose vocabulary denoting a superiority complex over those deemed "lowborn", and lastly, that insufferable adherence to protocol that could only mean this whelp had earned his rank not through slogging through the trenches like the rest, but had instead been given the right to send turians far better than he to their deaths only because he received an _education_.

"Kihilis Tanus," the officer drawled, "Four months ago you bombed the Office of Intercolonial Affairs on Aephus in one of the largest coordinated terrorist attacks of the last century. In doing so, you have forfeited any right to your life. You have been found guilty of sedition, treason, and mass murder, among other crimes. Your sentence, judged by a military tribunal, is death."

Idiot. As if Tanus had ever been tried in a court of law. Any Blackwatch soldier with half a brain wouldn't have wasted time upholding a charade. They would have just blown his brains out and dumped the body in the bog. Following protocol on a mission specifically designed to _break_ protocol, heh, this was usually why all the black-ops were left to the other Council races.

"But we are willing to negotiate. My government is prepared to offer you your life should you cooperate. All I require is that you answer one question, and you may instead be thrown into isolation within a black site holding facility. Who are you working for?"

The prisoner closed his eyes and permitted himself a small smile. His escort tensed up as if he had drawn a lethal weapon. "You know", Kihilis quietly chuckles, his voice rolling with a texture that would make any female weak at the knees "you really should have brought a salarian for this. Turians have always been such amateurs at interrogation, probably because of our rather direct mindset."

Taken aback by his charge's reticence, the officer snorted and applied what he thought to be a more forceful tone. "Answer the question. Who ordered the bombing?"

"You see, turians are unique in that we are one of the few sapient species to have descended from predators," Kihilis purred, almost lectured the firing squad arrayed in front of him, "The other species evolved from animals placed lower on the food chain. They lacked any natural weapons, so they were forced to adapt. In order to survive, these primitives needed to learn how to conquer a hostile world with nothing but their own ingenuity. They set up traps, used bait to lure larger prey, they lured predators away from the tribes, until inch by inch these weak creatures dominated the world around them using nothing but their minds." The prisoner idly flicked dirt off his talons. "That made all the difference. Turians never needed trickery or deceit, because when our intellect failed us we could still rely upon the natural defences of teeth and claws. It really is a wonder we evolved sapient minds in the first place, even after nature had granted us so much to work with."

The officer snarled, then nodded at a nearby soldier. The guard then raised his rifle and viciously brought it across Kihilis' scarred face. "What does this have to do with Facinus?" the officer spat.

Kihilis shook his head, still smiling. He had clearly been through worse beatings than this. "I've always wanted to meet you, Qybur, you could have been quite the asset." He spat blood into the muddy waters as he abruptly changed the subject. "Or would you prefer Qy?"

Qyburn's bravado instantly deflated as his mandibles flared in outrage."How...how do you know my name?"

"Taetrun native, born and raised. Your family was wealthy, not the worst quality to have when looking for a new recruit, which granted you a life of wealth and privilege. Sadly, it did not teach you humility, which is probably why you feel you not only exercise power over a turian you've only been told is guilty, but flaunt it. More importantly however, you have always been eager to please, from your father to the bullies pestering you through your years at Cirpritine."

Qybur nodded to the guard, who struck Kihilis again. Just as the prisoner was getting up to his feet, the guard landed another blow, hard enough this time to knock him to the ground and split a face plate. "Let me be perfectly clear, Mr. Tanus," The guard began stomping on Kihilis' chest. "The only reason your body is not rotting in the swamp only for some inbred Wildland yokel to stumble upon in the morning, is because my superiors believe you have intel of value. Now, you might think that grants you some measure of protection. If you do, I will take the liberty of informing you that could not be further from the truth. As a convicted terrorist, you have no rights, no demands, and above all no guarantee of safety," The guard began slamming the butt of his rifle in Kihilis' more tender areas, driving him to gasp out in agony. "In fact," Qybur continued, "it would be fair to say you have absolutely nothing, as even your life has been claimed by the Turian Hierarchy. So if you want to see the next sunrise, even if you see it on the shuttle ride to a maximum security prison where you will live out the rest of your fetid existence, you will tell me everything you know."

Kihilis didn't seem to particularly care at the particularly brutal beating he was enduring. He remained silent as the silent guard slowly beat the life out of him. Finally, after several minutes of uninterrupted abuse, Kihilis began giggling to himself. Qybur waved the guard to halt his assault, and Kihilis' laughter grew louder.

"Everything I know..." the madman whispered, as if remembering a particularily long joke. "But that's just it!" he chuckled after a moment of silence, his laughter rising in volume. The prisoner could barely contain himself, his sides shaking with mirth as the guard uneasily looked to Qybur for orders. The officer shook his head. "We know everything!" Kihilis managed to gasp.

Qybur was not amused. "What the hell are you talking about?" he said with an air of disdain as he turned to the guard again.

"All this time we are on the other side," Kihilis managed to gasp, "thinking 'oh the STG and the Spectres and who knows what else are looking over our shoulders and watching our people and recording every word we say' when the truth is you don't even know we exist!"

Qybur strode over to look Kihilis in the eye. "Oh we do know Mr. Tanus," he coldly replied, "and we're quick learners."

"Oh really? Then why am I still alive?" Khilis wheezed, "The answer's obvious, because all you have to go on is a name, a hollow title your employers cling to in the desperate hope that hope alone will assign it a modicum of worth. Here, I was prepared to take my secrets to the grave, but it seems like you don't even know if I'm the one you want!"

"Enough stalling!" You will tell me what you know, Mr. Tanus," Qybur's eyes grew hard as he drew his pistol and pressed it upon Kihilis' , "or I swear I will end you here and now!"

Slowly, Khilis' laughter died down. He still bore an amused smirk though. "Well then, the first thing you should know about us, is that we have people everywhere." He flicked his eyes to the guard beside him. "Am I right?"

At that, the faceless soldier, a loyal member of the Hierarchy Blackwatch for upwards of two decades, spun his rifle up and put three rounds in his compatriot's chest. The twelve manning the perimeter immediately turned to the sound of gunfire. They raised their rifles to cut the two traitors to shreds, whereupon five stepped behind the rest and each unloaded a full clip into the backs of the remaining seven. Brief flashes of molten gunfire lit up the buzzing night for a few tenuous seconds, before falling into silence again. The seven Blackwatch operatives never stood a chance. Turian minds, after all, had never quite grasped the concept of deceit.

The former prisoner Kihilis Tanus rose to his feet, staring at his former captor now with no trace of mirth in his eyes. His omni-cuffs disappeared, and he bent down to pick up Qybur's discarded sidearm.

Kihilis raised the pistol to Qybur's temple, the pampered officer's eyes widening in fear for the last time.

"Faux Facinus," he whispered. The muzzle flashed blue, and a corpse slumped to the ground.

"_Taetrus for Taetruns,_" intoned the others.

**AA**

The pond's surface lies undisturbed. The room has been rendered rendered impossibly dark, save for the floor-lighting giving the waters a luminescent glow. The atrium appears now almost dream-like as opposed to its normal bureaucratic drudgery. Instead of a gray and featureless ceiling hanging above so many gray and featureless people going to and fro their gray and featureless lives, it depicts a night sky empty of stars and the ground below shining in a simulacrum of shimmering clouds. Beauty is always greatest when it is unexpected, her grandfather used to say, and he would agree that this almost divine overture of perfect white transposed against perfect black is beautiful indeed. Such a scene of spontaneous duality sings to the artist in her.

Business overtakes pleasure. The water remains still, with only soft ripples as the koi fish glide lethargically through it's shallow depths. The fish then scatter in every direction as she breaks out into a full sprint, footsteps splashing in rapid succession without any feet to accompany them.

She hears a noise, and the footsteps stop as quickly as they began. Another sound, this time emanating from the opposite side of the atrium, the soft slide of metal against metal. A trained eye might recognize it as someone drawing a blade, but that is such a boring way of putting it. This was the galaxy's quietest declaration of war, a death threat delivered in less than a whisper without words.

A second series of footsteps begins from the source of the lethal noise, charging across the cavernous space of the atrium and through the rippling pond. These footfalls clearly belong to a different owner,as they are far heavier and clumsier than their opponent's. Water kicks up again, as both wraiths begin moving in erratic patterns, one weaving to and fro to distract and confuse the other. They shift together in what seems almost like a dance, then two ghosts meet for the first and last time.

One can hear nothing but the shuffle of moving feet locked in invisible combat. A careful listener might be able to make out the muffled grunts from their exertion and the dull thuds as hard blows are landed on unarmored bodies, but neither combatant is willing to break the facade. Each has hidden behind a mask for so long that the mask is all they have, the concept of discarding that mask is one neither can comprehend.

Finally, sparks fly between both sides as blades are crossed. Daggers that can cut through starship hulls meet on monomoleculor edges. Blows are dealt and returned in a heartbeat, each strike like blurs to unaugmented eyes. Knife fights are usually quick and bloody, less a proper duel and more an organized brawl, yet this exchange persists for the better part of five minutes. It is obvious both are matched in terms of technique and skill, yet one has an advantage the other did not. One that guaranteed her victory from the start.

She knows how to cheat.

Something small falls from the artificial night sky above, something round and pear shaped. The tech grenade detonates when it hits the floor. A bloom of crackling energy bubbles outward, rippling over them both and seething through the capacitors of her scatter suit. She knows what they must look like as she flips away- phantoms cloaked in a cascade of shattering light.

The tech grenade might have broken her cloak, but the accompanying Overload passes harmlessly over her keyed IFF. Her opponent, on the other hand, is not so lucky. A full discharge passes into his spine and up into his helmet, not a fatal dose but enough to give the turian a migraine that will feel like a Thresher Maw has burrowed into his skull. But he will live, and that is enough.

Kasumi walks to Rolan Quarn's smoking body and pockets a small OSD clipped to his belt. She gives a satisfied smirk as she strides back to the atrium's front door.

"No hard feelings kid," she playfully shouts back, "It's just business."

Rolan groans.


	28. Simultaneity: Eunoia

**Simultaneity: Eunoia**

_Humans have three color receptors in the eye: one responds most to light in the 445 nm wavelength range, one responds most to light in the 535 nm range, and one to light in the 575 range. Now, because we have three different cones, our brain has created a way to distinguish them: if the 445 nm one is lit, but the others aren't or aren't lit enough, our brain "sees" blue. Likewise, for the other two, our brain "sees" green and red, respectively._

_Now, if our color range was increased, so that the blue cone was centered in higher wavelengths, then it would be possible that the colors would simply shift, for example what is now "blue" would be more green, what is now ultraviolet that we can't see would be "blue". The way colors behave would stay fundamentally the same however: the reason there are three primary colors of light, red, green, and blue, isn't some property of light, it's a property of our eyes that stems from the fact that we have three color receptors. Likewise, there are three combinations where two of the cones react strongly (red-green, green-blue, blue-red), so our brain "sees" three secondary colors._

_Now, what if humans had an additional cone that was centered in the ultraviolet, around 350 nm? There would then be four primary colors of light, and this is where things get tricky. With four primary colors, there would actually be __**six**__ secondary colors, as that's how many ways you can have pairs of cones reacting strongly. However, some of these pairs would be "closer" to each other. For example, a photon of yellow light lights up our red and green cones pretty much the same amount, so our brain can't distinguish between yellow light and red and green light of equal mixture. However, there is no wavelength of photon that will light up the red and blue cones evenly without also lighting up the green cone, so when just the red and blue cones light up, our brain "invents" a color (magenta) to connect the high and low end of our visual range. If we had four primary colors, then we would have three secondary colors that are in between the peaks of the cones, those of uv-blue, blue-green, and green-red, two of them would loop back between non-adjacent cones like purple does for us, those of uv-green and blue-red, and one that would loop back the entire visual range, being uv-red. _

_So instead of a color wheel, our brain would most likely interpret something like three interconnected color rings to get the most information out of the input. Obviously, you can't imagine what any of those colors "look" like, because your brain is "imagining" all the colors it can interpret between already. The closest approximation we can get is asking a turian, or better yet a drell. _

_That's what's truly wonderful about this new galactic community we've managed to stumble upon, it can literally give us new perspectives through which we can percieve the universe._

_John Beinar, "Us and Them", __Time Magazine__, May 4, 2169._

**AA**

The apartment has two bedrooms, one kitchen, and one bathroom. Both contain a bed built for two, which are shared by four. The kitchen has little in the way of actual food, what with Omegan families rarely having the disposable income to actually eat at home, and any appliances have long since been sold off to pay some looming debt, so it too has been converted into a crude sleeping area. Ratty disposable mattresses litter the floor, and cheap blankets have been stretched over the counter in an attempt to preserve a modicum of privacy. Rotting omni-gel fashioned in the crude shapes of rockets and dinosaurs are strewn about the apartment, probably the closest these children will ever have to a toy. They are the lucky ones. At least they have a home.

They are not poor, by Omegan standards. They are not rich, by Omegan standards. These are the Omegan middle class, a small part of a vast majority just barely eking out enough of an existence to only have to live day to day. All this strata of society has to worry about is if they will have a meal tomorrow, or if one of the children will be snatched away to work in the factories, where their small bodies are perfect for crawling inside heavy machinery and removing any debris lodged in the whirling blades. This family does not live every second on the edge of a knife, always threatening to slip over the edge and tumble into the waiting abyss. No, instead they only live the life of abject misery, where their stomachs are never full and they never grow used to the smell. They are the lucky ones. At least they have a life.

The table is one of the cheap plastic units always shipped with the pre-fabs so favored by Alliance colonials. It is chipped and worn with age beyond its ownership, probably fished out of the scrap heap by a parent's keen eye while children played in the filth. But it has new markings from its newfound service with this family, a tapestry of faded scars and injuries telling a rich history of stale dinners scavenged from trash cans and heated arguments over how to pay the coming rent. This is a table that supported a family both literally and figuratively, serving as the bedrock on which to build the solid foundation of a home.

Seated at the head of the table is the father in a typical patriarchal position, and to his right is his wife. Their eyes are both downcast and staring intently at their meal, a cheap mixture of expired fast food and whatever they managed to cajole or outright steal from the tables of their neighbors. Three children of various ages fill out the rest of the table. All of them share the exact same pose, heads angled down and hands laying palm up on the table. It almost seems as if the family is praying in either thanks for what they have received, or in pleading to receive more than their pathetic meal. Humans call it grace, a name given for any of a number of short prayers said or an unvoiced intention held prior to or after eating, thanking God or whatever else that has given of themselves to furnish nutrients to those partaking in the meal.

Yet something is...off. Not in the scene, the stinking poverty of the small family gathering is genuine enough, but there is something about these darkened silhouettes of people that gives off a note of unease. Each member has some small defect, impossible for the untrained eye to notice in the dim lighting, yet once noticed paint a very different picture than presented. Nothing freakish like extra or missing limbs, just subtle errors that raise questions. A left arm slightly longer than the right. A head too large for such a young body. A masculine head on a feminine neck. Clues so small they stretch the meaning of the word, yet they are leads all the same. After all, he hasn't come here by coincidence.

He has come here because this is no family at all. The previous tenants moved out over four months ago. The landlord has heard no signs of squatters. And lastly, the children are all mixed races, two turian and one asari. The two adults consist of an average-sized human father, with presumably the mother seated to his right.

Dimly lit as the room was, all he could make out were their general outlines. He needed more to work with. He approaches as the lights come on, and when he finally sees, it takes every ounce of his titanic will to resist the urge to vomit. He has fought criminals and convicts, stood against gods and demons, stared down death a dozen times over and seen the dark horrors lurking in his subconscious. But what he sees in this small apartment complex tops any of it.

The 'turian' children are no turians at all. They are human boys between the ages of nine and eleven. A length of flat steel has been shoved into their upper skull to form a crude form of crest. Metal plates have been crudely transfixed onto the bodies to resemble scales. Their lower jaws have been split lengthwise and carefully stripped of any muscle or skin, leaving only bone carved into a twisted parody of mandibles. Their necks have been flayed and the muscles peeled into a somewhat avian shape, the skin peeled back to reveal glistening meat. A gaping hole sits in the center, where their throats have been torn out.

These bodies are a masterpiece tainted by overeagerness brought on through zealotry. The mandibles are imperfectly matched. The neck muscles show signs of tearing, indicating a sloppy skinning where too much force was applied on the knife. The crests shows little artisanship at all, merely placed there simply because the work demanded it. Clearly the culprit had envisioned this image in however many dark dreams, but they were clearly doing it more for the experience and less about the finished product. A trial run, before the real work set in.

The subversion of species continues with the asari, again a human. An adolescent this time, about the age of fourteen. Scalp tentacles have been sewn onto the forehead by an unskilled hand. Skin is slathered unevenly in blue paint, and small burn marks dot almost every inch of each arm where they were stabbed a hundred times by the small pinpoint of an omni-knife. But most important of all, the body is female, but the head is undoubtedly male. The head is attached to a slender neck by cooled omni-gel. Carved into the victim's chest, in large, angry red capital letters, is the word _WHORE. _

Frustration had set in with this one. Sloppy work with no real consistency or common theme. The killer had meant to savor this kill, to draw out every inch of life from either the male or female until all that remained was a husk to carve at their leisure. Something had set the killer off, something that had forced them to discard such a worthy prize as yet another item of the collection, another brush stroke when it could have been a painting in and of itself. He had seen this before. The killer believes they are in total control, that they have subsumed every aspect of their victim's existence, and then their control is challenged. It might be when the victim fights back and manages to draw blood. It might be when the authorities think they hear screams coming from the basement. Any act of defiance is enough, and those responsible always pay the price in the worst way.

And the two humans... are not human. He cannot even guess what they might have been. He cannot even guess what they are meant to _be_, aside from raw meat, bone, and gristle somehow fused together and molded into the shape of a body. He shines a light on one, where the mushed remains of an eye can be seen buried in the shoulder, and spots a slight blue waver shimmering just on the membranous surface. He reaches out to prod the sculpture, and an invisible bubble pops. Whatever was holding the meat's shape dissipates, and several gallons of liquefied person splatters on the floor. A Stasis field then, somehow held up for a period of hours rather than minutes, so weak it broke even at the slightest bit of contact.

These are where the artist found their muse, the magnum opus held up against all the other failures as if to mock the previous attempts. The rest are trial runs, wanton slaughter held up to some impossible ideal. The killer obviously meant to convey a message with this quaint little dinner, in how each victim is posed in the same act of prayer to a meaningless custom. But the others are merely decoration. These two are more. They are the _pièce de résistance_. They are the sum total of three murders that were little more than practice, before a madman finally hit his stride.

He stares at the 'art' currently staining the threadbare carpet.

He turns back to the other bodies. Each victim's limb is a different color. The 'asari' is clearly two different people. Each 'turian' eye is a different color, green, blue, brown, grey, with arms and legs of mismatched proportions. These people weren't just murdered, they were mutilated. Carved apart and sewn into each other, blending the bodies together to the point that it became impossible to determine where one individual ended and another began.

Yet something is off. The head attached to the 'asari' may have had its limbs sewn into the other two, yet the torso is missing. And conversely, the younger children are missing their limbs, with only the head and torso clearly marked as their own. Pieces had been left out, yet this killer didn't seem the wasteful sort.

He turns back to the 'parents', making out small fragments of bone amidst the brown slurry that used to be a sentient being, and notes that the volume of matter per 'body' would need to comprise more than one victim.

He realizes what the killer did with the spare parts, and for not the first time, Garrus Vakarian wonders what he is fighting for.

**AA**

Daniel Peters wakes up every morning in a dingy bed with a bottle of whiskey lying close at hand at whatever hour the alcohol finally wears off. He clutches his throbbing head for a good ten minutes, because no matter how many times he drinks to forget, the pain never lessens, and rises up as soon as he is sure his head won't split open.

He steadies himself as his body reacquaints itself with gravity, and reaches for his shirt. Peters is pretty sure it was black when he first got it, back when he was first ordained, but it has turned a faded grey after so many unwashed years of abuse. He wore this tattered grey robe through warzones and despoiled wastes, trying to bring the love of God through good action to the dark places of the world. Not once was he ever injured, and his fellow clergymen used to joke that that robe gave more protection than a hardsuit or kinetic barrier ever could. He might have even believed that, until his third day on Omega when a vagrant sliced into his hamstring with a rusty shiv. Peters will walk with a limp now for the rest of his life, to remind him about the follies of blind faith.

Peters dons his itchy grey robe, looks at himself in the dirty mirror hanging on the far wall, sees the faded eyes and greying hair of a man twice his age, and takes another swig from the bottle. He leaves the whiskey by the bed and locks the door to the small room behind him, so as to conceal his private sins from the rest of his 'flock'. He doesn't need to of course, no one would dare trespass into the inner sanctum of Father Peters, but he does so all the same. Perhaps it means he still does not fully trust these people, these _Omegans_ who come to him not for God, but for generosity. Perhaps that means he never will.

Leaving the small quarters on the chapel's second floor, his first stop is checking in on his patients. Ameria's condition isn't improving, he notes with a dejected sigh, and if the rot continues to worsen he may need to amputate. Even if things miraculously take a turn for the better, it is unlikely she will ever regain use of the arm. That blow hits all the harder, because that is Ameria's drawing arm, and she could have been quite the artist. He administers another dose of painkillers, and the small turian girl gently nods in thanks. No doubt it hurts too much to speak. Peters is silent as he leaves the room, for he has other patients to see, and words of comfort are a moot point.

He moves to the next patient, making a mental note to pray for her. Some days, especially the bad ones, it seems like a prayer is all he can offer.

Ameria is just the start. Ever since the Gozu massacre, his small church is one of the only places to offer free medical aid. Hundreds filter in through those small double doors, ignoring the strange symbols and meaningless pictures only to beg for yet another handout. No one ever offers to help, or asks for any healing of the spiritual kind. They simply take their drug detox, have their wounds sewn up, and leave to get shot up all over again. To tend this small house of a silent God is a job without reward, and it is the job of Daniel Peters and Daniel Peters alone. A lesser man might have given up on such an endeavour. A lesser man would still be stuck on Omega, so strength of character becomes a moot point when there is no alternative.

The second room holds Litherax and his bondmate. The old turian has not left his beloved's side for three weeks, and yet again, Peters finds Litherax standing by the bed tightly gripping his mate's tiny hand. The gesture might be touching, if Peters had not seen it a hundred times before, with only one result. Ultimately, there is only so much he can do with cloth bandages and expired medi-gel. All that is left to do is tell the next of kin, and hope they don't attack him out of some misplaced blame. The couple cannot afford translators, so Peters has to gesture to the old turian, to whom his bondmate is the bright light in the dark abyss of his life, that his wife will not last the night. Litherax takes the news with typical turian stoicism, nods to Peters, and mutters something low and reverent in his native tongue. Peters leaves the room before Litherax finishes, making a mental note to add another prayer to the repertoire.

Next is Ledra, twitching and fidgeting as Peters closes the door behind him. Ledra's rubbery skin is covered in a sheen of sweat that smells like mold. Peters gives him another shot for the quakes, and almost immediately Ledra's muscles begin to relax. Weeks ago, Peters would have sat the boy down and lectured him for a good hour on just what the drugs did to his body, but that was then and this is now. Peters turns away as Ledra spouts a dozen assurances that he'll never touch the stuff again, but the fresh track marks on his arm say differently. Peters doesn't mind. At least Ledra is one of the few to have the decency to lie about it.

A dozen more, each with a story that Peters will never bother to find out. After all, most will be die either here or on the streets within the week, so the only thing attachment will give him is another reason to drink.

Last on the agenda is was a woman who had been brought here two days ago in bad shape. She had been stabbed twice, once in the chest and once in the stomach, and beaten within an inch of her life. Peters had dragged her up the steps and into an empty room, where it had taken every ounce of his surgical skill just to keep her from bleeding out. He had removed the metal shards still embedded in her left lung, and sewn up the gaping wounds as best he could. She didn't die outright, though she hadn't regained consciousness. Her scorched dogtags listed her only as Jentha, with any surname obscured.

Unsurprisingly, Jentha doesn't look like she was going to make it. Peters checks if he needs to change her bandages, or if the wounds have reopened. Somewhat satisfied that she will live at least one more day under his care, he leaves the room and locks the door behind him. Others here know she is a mercenary, and they might take his absence and her comatose state to revisit a little revenge.

Having finished checking up on his patients, Peters goes downstairs into the chapel for a quiet evening sermon. As always, the pews will be empty, but that isn't the point. He delivers the sermon if only because it is one of the few things he believes he can still do right, even if no one is willing to hear them.

He expected an empty chapel, so imagine his surprise when he found an Archangel kneeling in a house of God.

The priest walks over to kneel down next to his unexpected guest.

It is the priest who speaks first. "You don't strike me as the praying sort."

"I'm not."

"Then might I ask what you're doing?"

"Praying."

Peters gave a dry chuckle. "You don't strike me as a godly man either."

"I'm not."

"Then might I ask just what you're praying to?"

"There is no solace above or below. Only us, small, solitary, striving, battling one another for one more second of existence. I pray for myself," the Archangel stands up, "to myself."

"A bleak outlook. You should write poetry." The smile fades from Peters' weathered face. He sighs. "Were I a younger man, I might have fought you on that. But now, after having seen what I've seen, I'm just going to say that you wouldn't be too far off the mark. If there is something bigger than us, it's probably long since been fed up with all the bullshit." He glanced at the large cross fashioned out of scrap metal.

The Archangel turns to the priest. The green eyes behind the blank mask of a faceplate betray nothing. "More this time, Father. Humans, posed in an apartment complex about five blocks away."

Peters' expression grows hard as he takes the news. "How many?"

"Three."

"Then that makes nine." Peters loudly grinds his teeth, and longs for his whiskey like a long lost lover. "You sure it was him?"

"Positive. The bodies seem to match with the other victims."

"And this might seem like a stupid question, but did the bastard leave anything behind?"

"I have a few leads, but nothing solid yet."

"Keep me posted if you do. I have a few contacts who want to see this guy caught more than anything. I'll relay any information you have, keep my ear to the ground, and see what they come up with."

The Archangel paused. "Be careful who you trust. If the wrong people find out you've been in contact with me, it could invite retaliation."

"You worry about you, and I'll worry about me. It wouldn't be the first time I've had to defend myself." On Omega, even a man sworn to nonviolence carries a gun beneath his robes.

The Archangel tilts his head upstairs. He is silent for a long moment, before turning back to look at Peters. The old man picks up on the unasked question. "No, she hasn't woken up yet, but I'll let you know the moment she does. But don't get your hopes up: they left her in a pretty bad way."

"I know, and I appreciate your help."

Peters clapped the vigilante on the shoulder. "Least I can do for all the good you've done. Not many on this station that would take the time to help us."

"Regardless, thank you."

"Might I ask why you're so interested in her well being? You didn't really give me a straight answer when you left a known lieutenant of the Blue Suns bleeding on my doorstep."

Some of the sick children, probably sneaking out of bed to investigate the noises downstairs, can be seen peeking from behind one of the pews. The Archangel briefly glances in their general direction, and almost immediately they scurry away. The children are afraid of him, but Peters cannot guess what that means to the strange figure. The Archangel's tone grows slightly more somber. "You notice a distinct lack of Suns after the battle down in Doru?"

"Now that you mention it, yeah." Peters scratched his beard contemplatively. "Although I heard they were the hardest hit from that colossal shitstorm, almost a full platoon lost to whatever tore up half the district. I just assumed they were licking their wounds while they waited for reinforcements to ship in."

"It's worse than that," the Archangel replied, "Not many people know this, but there was a massacre over at the main Suns compound about three days ago. I don't know who's responsible, only that it wasn't any of the other three, and that the majority of the Blue Suns on Omega have been wiped out. Jentha was one of the survivors."

"But that's good news, right? Less mercs on Omega always spells good news to me."

"Not when it leaves a vacuum of power. This wasn't just a massacre, it was a coup. Someone capitalized on the chaos over the Sepulcher and seized power from Cirn."

"Shit, a change in management usually doesn't spell good things down here. I've seen it a before, merc upstarts calling themselves warlords before the rest of the company puts them back in line. They like to solidify their power by gathering their boys and setting half of Omega on fire."

"From what I've gathered this is more than just your typical Omegan backstabbing. I just don't know exactly what."

"And you're hoping Jentha will be able to tell you?"

"Something like that."

"Alright then. I'll call if anything comes up."

"Thank you, Father."

Peters begins to walk to the pulpit. He laughs again. The lights overhead briefly flicker. "Again with the thanking me? Heh, I should be thanking you for all the good you've done. Don't think I can recall ever having so few mercs walking the streets. I can see them even now, staying out of the shadows and only going out in groups. It's obvious they're afraid of-"

The priest turns. The Archangel is gone.

"...you."

He decides the sermon can wait. Father Peters gets down on his knees, and mutters a quiet prayer for yet another lost soul.

* * *

**Buildup, how I love you so.**


	29. Simultaneity: Phosphenes

**Simultaneity: Phosphenes**

"_Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."_

_- Norman Cousins_

**AA**

I shut my eyes and see her burning.

I see her suffocating. She grips her throat as the precious few seconds of air leak out in a faint plume, life slipping away like so much sand between twitching fingers. She flails about in futility, an unconscious reaction as an oxygen-deprived brain misfires signals to dying neurons. She kicks her legs to keep her head above nonexistent waters, drowning only in the absence of air. She strains to reach behind her back to somehow combat the problem at its source, but a slow suffocation is an impossible foe to continues for no longer than a minute and a half, until her limbs slow their manic movement, and her hand falls as if cut by a puppeteer's strings.

It will take another three to four minutes for brain death. Perhaps the heart is still beating, slowly pumping cold blood through cold meat. I am not so lucky. The bullet tears through my heart at supersonic speeds, entering and exiting through my body in a perfect hole the size of a grain of sand. There is no pain. There is no fear. There is not even resignation. I close my eyes, and see her burning.

Alliance hardsuits can hold up to three hours of oxygen, but I know the first ships will not come for three days. N7 marines are trained to push themselves beyond human limits, but I know she is dead before the Normandy's drive core detonates, scattering what remained of the ship across tens of thousands of miles of frozen wasteland. I know she suffocated before the body is pulled into the planet's orbit. Somehow, the body escapes incineration from the initial explosion, blown outward by the edge of the blast wave into the empty expanse of the sky. She drifts there in a moment of stillness, finally free for the first time in her horrifying excuse for a life.

I know that she knew. But did she accept it? Did she finally surrender to the one obstacle she could never overcome, or remain defiant to the end? Did she close her eyes in acceptance, or kick and beg and spit and snarl until finally all she could do was scream in futility, with no one to hear it but her? Did she waste those last few breaths whispering assurances of a better place waiting for her, or were her last moments nothing more than a whirlwind of frantic pleas and bitter tears? Was her last thought of what she would leave behind, or of what she left unsaid? I ask these questions and a hundred like them, except the one that matters. I will never ask the question, so I will never find my answers.

I fall from an unseen height. Sights and sounds I can no longer recognize drift past me. I hit the ground and hear another part of my rotting hulk of a body give way. I lay there, among the filth and the rot, for what seems like an age. Life seeps out of me one heartbeat at a time, and yet I feel nothing. No pain. No loss. No betrayal. Maybe I really did die two years ago, on that bloodied slab. My body is now finally accepting it. I could feel the pain then. I could feel the hooks digging into my ribs, I could feel the saw working its way through my arm. I could feel the pain then. I almost miss it, because at least I will have something to feel.

I shut my eyes and see her burning. An invisible hand gently pulls her to the world below, her speed accelerating as she grows closer and closer as gravity reasserts itself.

Vision returns in blue. Blood from my cracked skull seeps into my eyes, as I finally remember to take one gurgling breath. It is wet and it is ragged, the exhalation of a dying man, but it is mine. What remains of my life pools across the floor in thick blue, the metallic taste entering my nose and saturating my tongue. I cannot move, or maybe I no longer see the point. I lay on the floor and debate whether I want to die.

I am surrounded by bodies. I am buried by them. Corpses of every species and allegiance, red, blue, yellow, enemies in life that have finally united in death. Every casualty from the battle has been gathered and dumped here, into the underscape of Doru, easy disposal and prevention of plague. Eventually, the vorcha will come to feast on the carcasses, and when they've had their fill the rest will be hauled off to be dumped in the Plume. I will be taken with them, just one more body to throw onto the pyre.

But not all are the same. Nestled among the butchered and the butchers I find an innocent. Most likely caught in the early hours of the crossfire. There is fear in her glassy dead eyes, and a bullet hole sits just above her heart. Who was this woman? Who was this sole witness to my last moments?

In my delirium, my mind travels along abstract paths. I see that somewhere, years and years ago, a child is born. A human. A female. Her skin is soft and her hair is bright. A loving mother cradles this baby in her arms for the first time. She is beautiful. I would like to believe they are happy together. I would like to believe this girl would grow into a beautiful young woman. I would like to believe she dreamed of becoming something more than what society had intended for her, of rising above her hardships and making a better life for both herself and her mother.

My fantasy takes a sad turn. Her mother falls ill. Medical bills are high. School is expensive. She takes time away from school to work so that she can take care of her loving mother. Her mother pleads with her to reconsider. She does not wish for her daughter to throw away her bright future for the sake of a dying old woman. The daughter refuses. Eventually it gets to be too much and she drops out. Works full time.

The treatments are expensive. Work is difficult to find. She turns to stripping. Prostitution. Still it is not enough. Her once soft skin has aged and her shiny hair has dulled. During her work in the streets she acquires a drug habit that only further deepens the hole. Her mother dies alone in a hospital bed. She comes to Omega like so many others, to forget. For a brief time she manages to scrounge together some semblance of a life, until she is caught in a crossfire between three gangs and an Archange. When the garbagemen find her body, they will have their way with it, then toss it in with the others. I unwillingly weep bloody tears for this dead whore, for she and I have become kin, here in this mass grave.

I think I'm dying. I'm still not sure if that matters.

I shut my eyes and see her burning. An invisible hand gently pulls her to the world below, her speed accelerating as she grows closer and closer as gravity reasserts itself. Her armor begins to glow a cherry red from the heat of reentry, small pieces of seared flesh and scorched armor tearing loose from the extreme forces and spiraling away into ash.

This garbage heap will be my legacy. It will be my tomb. I am buried here in and by my enemy, just as I have been for two miserable years. They surround me, suffocate me, even in death weigh me down to drag me into the cold dark abyss. I wish I still had the strength to spite them, to spit in their mocking faces only now just beginning to rot and drag myself out of this wretched pit. I try to rise, but what limbs I have left have turned to lead. I can do nothing but clasp the hand of that unsung innocent, another life I have failed to save. I grip the clammy hand as a drowning man might cling to a floating bit of flotsam. This whore is my last link to the land of the living. I weep for her, for myself, and for the hell that has entrapped us. Omega is as much a victim as any of us.

Why did she do it? Had I failed her? Had I strayed so far from the narrow path that I had become her enemy? Was it actually her, and not some delusion conjured by a broken mind? I ask these questions and a hundred like them, except the one that matters. I will never ask the question, so I will never find my answers.

I once had a cause worth fighting for. Now all I have left is a bleeding skull and a small hole in my heart. The only reason I'm still alive is that the bullet didn't fracture, instead just entering and exiting in one clean trajectory. It is a one in a million misfire, and it happened today. It is a one in a million misfire, and it happened to me. I should feel lucky. I feel anything but.

I shut my eyes and see her burning. An invisible hand gently pulls her to the world below, her speed accelerating as she grows closer and closer as gravity reasserts itself. Her armor begins to glow a cherry red from the heat of reentry, small pieces of seared flesh and scorched armor tearing loose from the extreme forces and spiraling away into ash. Another shooting star joins the display briefly visible in the skies above. It is beautiful, but there is no one there to see it.

For longer than I could have ever imagined, I contemplate ending it here and there. My task is done. The war is lost. The only thing left to do now is have the decorum to die with a shred of dignity. Dignity may be hard to find here, among the rotting bodies, but it will be enough for me that I can at least die on my own terms. For once, I will be in control of my own destiny.

I shut my eyes and see her burning. An invisible hand gently pulls her to the world below, her speed accelerating as she grows closer and closer as gravity reasserts itself. Her armor begins to glow a cherry red from the heat of reentry, small pieces of seared flesh and scorched armor tearing loose from the extreme forces and spiraling away into ash. Another shooting star joins the display briefly visible in the skies above. It is beautiful, but there is no one there to see it. Less than half of the her actually makes it past the atmosphere, where what remains of the charred lump of fused meat and metal finally buries itself into the ice. The scene plays over and over and over again, like a projector in my head caught endlessly in loop.

There is a part of me that cannot go on. It is small. It is cowardly. It calls itself Garrus Vakarian, and it let her burn while he sailed away into safety. It wants me to lay here and bleed while Omega festers on. Garrus Vakarian is empty and hollow, a wooden idol carved in place of a dead man. I will not abide its weakness. I cast out this broken piece of me and rise to my shaking feet. My hands feebly dig into the walls of flesh encasing me. I am buried beneath so many. The smell is unpleasant. Only now do I realize the great weight pressing down on me, and just how hard it is to breath.

Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, I dig myself out of my grave. I dig and shove and rend and tear with one good arm, but I slowly make my way out of the pit. My muscles scream from overuse, my lungs are on fire from the exertion, and my heart is on the very brink of giving out. It wants to give up, this weak piece of of me, but I will not give it the satisfaction. I am keep myself alive only through sheer force of will. I want to die, but it is the unfortunate truth of life that we do not always get what we want.

I shut my eyes and see her burning. An invisible hand gently pulls her to the world below, her speed accelerating as she grows closer and closer as gravity reasserts itself. Her armor begins to glow a cherry red from the heat of reentry, small pieces of seared flesh and scorched armor tearing loose from the extreme forces and spiraling away into ash. Another shooting star joins the display briefly visible in the skies above. It is beautiful, but there is no one there to see it. Less than half of the her actually makes it past the atmosphere, where what remains of the charred lump of fused meat and metal finally buries itself into the ice. For a brief moment, Alchera is given its first taste of warmth.

I shut my eyes and see her burning. This is what I see everytime I dare to turn away. And when I open my eyes, Omega greets me with the familiar sound of tortured metal and gnashing gears echoing down poorly maintained streets under the crushing red gloom. Fleeing. Chasing. That's all this place is. Just fleeing and chasing. Tonight, I have learned what if feels like to be both hunter and hunted. I am free. I am alive. All I have left are the few breaths my broken heart will allow me, but they are mine all the same. They have taken everything but an inch, yet that inch is all that matters.

The Second Cyclical script from the hanging street signs and the neglected piles of rubble point this place out to still be Doru District. The streets are empty, understandable considering the massacre that took place here recently. It will be at least a week before the people trust the streets again. They are wrong to put their trust in such a volatile thing, but they have no choice but to continue.

Blood flows freely from a dozen places, all of which mean nothing to me. I call upon my training. Focus on the white-hot center of the pain, face it, but do not fight it, do not deem it worthy of acknowledgement. The worst insult an enemy can suffer is to be ignored.

I slowly begin to limp into a nearby alleyway. A child stares downward from a balcony two stories above me. He watches on in mute horror, his mouth hanging agape in a silent shriek of terror. That is what I am to this naive young mind. Not a hero. Not an Archangel. Only one more monster in a land of only monsters. I have become the boogeyman lurking under the child's bed, I have become the shadow always skirting the corner of his eye. When I came to Omega, I had set out to scare criminals, not children. I should feel disgusted. All I feel is exhausted.

For a long time the streets are silent. I use this moment of rest to collapse against a stained wall. The smell of corpses wafts up from the upturned sewer grate. I pant and pant as my heart strains to keep me alive. Pain blurs my senses, and all I can do is shut my eyes and hope for a few more seconds. Focus. Remember your training, master the enemy. I reach into my satchel and fish for something, anything, that can help stave off the scythe. My fumbling hand feels three vials. I drag them out with a renewed fervor. Two are broken, splintered shards of plexi-glass still stained with blessed orange. A spirit smiles on me as I procure an intact dose of heavy grade medi-gel. In a heartbeat I shove it into my chest and sigh in relief as the painkillers kick in. There, that should hold. For the moment, at least.

Then I hear voices. Each has the raspy flang and heavy vowels of a native Taetrun. I've never been, although I once had a partner from there. His name was Rillum, and he came from Spaedar. He enlisted in C-Sec to try and weasel his way out of a second tour in the military. I am not a very good turian, so I didn't judge him too harshly for it. We worked well together for six months, after which he went back home to join Taetrun law enforcement. Rillum lasted a week before he entered a squad car and found it had a separatist bomb under it. I was invited to the funeral. I didn't go, catching Saleon took priority. I hope the family still doesn't hold it against me.

I tilt my head and make out the shadows of four. Rising to my feet, I move to investigate and my pulse begins to quicken. Omega has no innocents, only degrees of guilt. A flimsy justification, but I am too tired to argue with myself and too reluctant to write off this entire night as a waste.

There are three turians, each bearing that loathsome white sun upon their chests. Three of them have the fourth surrounded, a human, cornering her so that her back is digging into the back alley wall. One of the three turians is especially aggressive. He trusts a threatening claw into the woman's chest. She shrugs. Sinks deeper into the wall. Her gesture is meant to be disarming. Submissive. A plea for negotiation. The woman says something but I'm too far away to hear it clearly, and it's too dark to read her lips. She says something else. Then the smallest of the three gives a dismissive shake of his head, and the aggressive one backs off a bit.

Pain fades into memory as the routine kicks back in. As the scene plays out before me, I notice how they regard each other with familiarity. Without hearing a word of the conversation, it's obvious they all know each other. This is no random shakedown. They've done this before. Good. That means I have a little time.

I ghost behind them and cloak myself in the many shadows. It's not until I hear their voices coming in clearly that I realize how close I am to the action. Here, the spotty power grid of the lower districts is my ally, bathing the streets in blessed dark. The mercenaries could switch to night vision and easily spot me, but that would distract them from the matters at hand. It is a good thing they don't have the time to worry about legends.

"...Would you listen to me for one second," the woman pleads. Upon hearing her voice I detect the faint note of education. She clearly does not belong here, in the filthy streets of Doru. "We can't just rip it out and plug it back in. It's now a part of a greater whole, and I don't know what will happen if we isolate and remove the original code. Wiping the memory might be the least of our problems."

"Don't play games with us, Doctor," says the smallest Sun. He speaks with the voice of authority, and not the thuggish intimidation I have grown so accustomed to hearing. "Nothing suggests a separation is impossible, especially when you could never predict _integration_ in the first place. You are incapable of that level of incompetence, so I will repeat myself one last time: Retrieve the program, and restore the project to a functioning capacity."

"I can't just do the impossible because you say so. Believe what you want, but it won't make your project move any faster." This seems to upset the small turian with the leader's voice. The aggressive one grabs the woman by the collar with both hands, shoving her roughly against the alley wall.

If I'm going to make a move at all I ought to make it now, but my heart thunders in my chest. The leaden weight returns to my limbs and the pain of the gunshot wound returns with a vengeance. What am I thinking? I could go now. Leave this 'doctor' to a fate she probably deserves. From the sound of their talk she's likely a criminal too.

Criminals. I hate criminals. I hate doctors. Both have built me up and torn me down enough times that I no longer bother to count the mental breakdowns.

"Wait! Wait!" I hear the woman scream, the panic dense in her voice. "If you kill me Tanux will find out! I'm working with him now. You hurt me and he won't take it lightly."

"Is that a threat, Doctor?" The leader's voice takes on a lethal edge.

I try to bring my limbs under control, stop them from shaking, but I can't. My stomach lurches. Heaves. Is this fear? I shut my eyes...

I shut my eyes and see her burning. The face is frozen in a scream before it too melts into meat, and for a brief moment a Shepard becomes a star.

The weak piece of me stays my hand. It frays my nerves and sets every inch of my body against me. It is afraid we will lose everything again, that all our work will again amount to a reserved seat in a mass grave. I will not abide its weakness. I cast out this weak piece of me, that called itself Garrus Vakarian, and ready myself to fight the next battle in my endless war. I materialize above the three in a display of shifting shadows and piercing green eyes. I charge headlong into the aggressive one, whose shoulders are built like a krogan. He shouts. A mixture of agony and surprise bubbles out his throat as my fist sinks into his midsection. He doubles over from the force of the blow, and I bring his face down upon my knee. It is a good feeling, to again exist in a world of only blacks and whites.

I wheel around, fist glowing red, and smash the face of the other Sun. He's sturdy. Doesn't go down as easily. This one tries to retaliate, swiping at me with a drawn combat knife, but I sidestep him easily and strike him in the throat. Now he falls. I stumble as my heart gives out for a brief moment. He lunges again, and this time I grip the offending arm and twist it out of its socket. He screams in agony, and a weak part of me reviles the pain I inflict.

The small turian with the leader's voice draws a gun. A Carnifex. A weapon that could easily end my crusade here and now, in this stinking alley. He fires once but I am no longer there. I melt back into the shadows, watching how his eyes widen in anxiety, noting the facial tics that always accompany the realization that they are now the prey.

I fall upon him in the final hammerblow. He cries out once before I hurl him into the wall. He tries to rise, but I dispatch him with a quick kick to the lower jaw.

It is done. Three down, all of Omega to go. I turn back, and see that the doctor is now gone. She most likely fled during the struggle, another criminal trying to escape justice. We will meet again, of that I am sure.

Blood drips onto the street. It would appear that the medi-gel seal has been broken. Understandable, after suffering a near-fatal gunshot wound and then engaging an armed squad of three. Probably not the smartest thing to do, but then again, my life hasn't exactly been an unbroken string of smart choices. I call Rune for pickup, and fall back against the alley wall. I know the Hawk will arrive long before I bleed out, but some part of me wishes that it doesn't. It is a small part of me. A weak part. But a part of me all the same.

I shut my eyes and see her burning.


End file.
